


Enemy

by HGRomance



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Gamemaker Katniss, Mockingjay Peeta, Romance, Sexual Tension, Suspense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-13
Updated: 2015-02-03
Packaged: 2018-02-25 04:56:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 26,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2609327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HGRomance/pseuds/HGRomance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I’m Katniss Everdeen-Snow. I’m eighteen years old, the president’s granddaughter, and the youngest gamemaker Panem has ever known. I’ve been taken prisoner by Peeta Mellark and the rebels of District 13. But I’m dangerous and trained to kill, and I’m not going down without a good, long, hard fight. Canon Divergence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this was supposed to be a one-shot, but it turned into something longer and completely out of my comfort zone. Hope you guys like my second attempt at canon divergence!
> 
> Breakdown: This is story is already finished, with eight chapters, but postings will vary. No set schedule this time.
> 
> Thank you Chelzie, Court, iLoVeRynMar, and Misshoneywell. Also happy birthday, Kika! This first chapter is dedicated to you ;)
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own THE HUNGER GAMES trilogy. It belongs to Suzanne Collins. I merely want to spend more time with her characters.
> 
> Music: "Blinding" by Florence and the Machine.

The little shit just won't die.

When he fails to drown, Katniss scowls at the arena hologram. When he recovers from the force field, she rips off her blazer and loosens the top button of her blouse, then barks at one of her minions to turn the air up. When that suicidal morphling throws herself in front of Peeta to save him from the rabid baboons, Katniss flings her arm out and swats the nearest tray of refreshments in frustration. Crystal goblets and a decanter crash to the ground, splintering into shards of glass.

Ever since this boy and his berry trick bested Katniss in the first Games, painting her into a fool for the whole of Panem, she vowed to make him pay. Most gamemakers would have stopped breathing by that time, punished in secret ways that involved locked doors and orchestrated lies. But not her. She has immunity on her side. For now, at least.

Yet that doesn't make up for being professionally lanced by Peeta Mellark, a boy with the bluest eyes she's ever seen. Eyes that had caused her to lose her concentration in the first arena, when she should have blown him and his friend, Delly Cartwright, to bits.

Katniss wants to shut those eyes of his permanently. They're courageous, compassionate, and dangerous. As if she doesn't have enough to prove by being the youngest gamemaker in history, newly eighteen, she has to deal with this burden of a victor. This boy who's become a symbol for the people, a threat to her way of life.

If any gamemaker should know how to eliminate him, it should be one his age, but people in the Capitol are beginning to laugh at her behind her back. She blames that boy, that Mockingjay, with his infuriating heroism and talent with words, both of which have sidetracked her far too often. She cannot let him win a second time. There's no telling whether she'll be able to avoid the consequences twice in a row, no matter what her relation is to the powers that be.

"Miss Everdeen-Snow," a guard says, marching into the control room.

Katniss grinds her teeth. Great. It seems her concerns have manifested into reality.

She whirls away from the hologram and crosses her arms. "What?" she snaps, though she already knows.

"The president would like to see you."

She follows the guard and his glossy spectacle of a uniform through a gilded hallway and into a solarium. The room is deceptively sunny and filled with potted rose bushes. Standing beside one of those bushes is an older man with a hive of shocking white hair.

He has his back facing her. He speaks without turning. "My dear, I thought I warned you to contain him."

She folds her arms behind her back respectfully. "I have."

"And I do believe we agreed not to lie to each other. You haven't contained him. Don't state otherwise."

Fine. She may not have contained Mellark, but there is time yet. The Cartwright girl died yesterday. She wasn't the boy's lover, nor did either of them want to be lovers, even though they pretended as much. Still, Cartwright was a good friend, and now he's lost her. That has certainly weakened him a notch.

Katniss is about to point that out when Snow holds up a pair of scissors and snips one of his roses. The bud lands on the floor, making her think of a severed head. "When I employed you, people had their doubts. A female gamemaker, and not only that, but an adolescent. A well-bred, vicious one, skilled at manipulation and strategy—but still, a young woman. One who sometimes has trouble following orders."

She swallows but keeps her head high. The man spins around, placing the rose in his lapel. He beckons her with his cupped palm, and she approaches obediently while festering inside.

"What else did we agree to?" he quizzes her.

"That I would convince the people I'm worthy of this job," she answers mechanically.

"And have you?"

"I will, President Snow."

"No need to be so formal when we're alone." His bushy brows rise. "Now . . . you will _what_?"

"I'll convince them."

"No. You'll convince _me_." He gives her a false grin. "The boy is having an effect on you, and you don't seem aware of it."

Oh, but she is aware of it. She recalls every dark look that has passed between her and Peeta Mellark, every hard glare he aimed her way in the training room while he displayed his strength in tight-fitting clothes. Plus that one time they were forced to dance in the ballroom during the Victory Tour, when his jaw locked and the discord radiated between them—as well as something else, something that had to do with the disturbing way Peeta had stared at her braid and how their bodies moved an inch closer to one another.

He's been affecting her for longer than the president knows, longer than she'd actually dare to admit. Going back even further, to a time before the first Games.

"Prove me wrong, dear," Snow finishes, snapping her out of it.

A hot wave of embarrassment and fury races up Katniss's throat. She stifles her temper and nods.

"Good. Now go back to work." He tilts his cheek toward her, waiting.

Katniss steps forward and pecks his wrinkled skin. "Yes, Grandfather."

The minute she leaves the solarium, she belts out a string of curses before stomping off to the control room, the spikes of her heels stabbing the floor. Her flat palms smack the door with enough force to blow it open. Perfect timing, as reinforcements have supplied her with another Avox and a fresh tray of drinks. Ignoring the looks of the controllers, she swipes a fluted glass of whatever from the Avox's salver and swallows the purple liquid in one gulp, then drops it back onto the tray.

She prowls the circumference of the hologram, her silence explosive even to her own ears. Finally, she stalks to the rim of the arena and braces her hands there, drumming her fingernails in thought. She leans forward to get a better look, her eyes zeroing in on the number 12. He's gathered with his allies at the Cornucopia. They've just figured out the arena is a clock.

A grin spreads across her face. _Well, let's see them tell time after this._

Pushing back from the hologram, she addresses the controller to her right by twirling her finger. "Change it up. Spin it."

Just wait. She'll teach that boy not to fuck with her.

kpkpkpkpkp

She has him. She has him now.

Katniss feels her eyes gleaming as she keeps them peeled to the Cornucopia spinning like a disc. It would be so easy to watch the TV screens instead, but she chooses to focus on the hologram.

As for the details that the hologram _can't_ show her, she relies on her exceptional imagination. After all, it was her knack for creativity, aside from her bloodroots and violent prowess, which won her this job.

She watches the number 12 and envisions the inferior Mellark falling victim to her tactics. In her mind, he's clinging for dear life to the serrated crevices of the hill, the landscape roaring by with a vengeance and blinding him with its speed. He's thinking, of all things, of her. Katniss, the sinister but darkly attractive gamemaker, whom he hates. The blades of her irises haunt him, sharpened by an old, stubborn memory between them. Irises that he will never see again, if he dies.

Katniss pictures Peeta tightening his grip on the hill, even more motivated to stay alive. The tendons of his hands strain to keep from flopping around, every part of his body resisting the maelstrom lashing out at him. And to her bafflement, this elicits a rather tingly response inside her. Literally _inside her_. That his determination to live is because of some absurd notion about seeing her eyes again . . . Well, the fantasy is enough to make her wretch. That she, Katniss, would entertain such an idea. Ugh.

She's so outraged by it that it takes Mellark's actual demise to jolt her back to reality. In the hologram, he loses the battle, the air vacuuming him up and launching him into the sea.

For a second, the sight revives her. The impending, reliable sound of a canon resounds in her head. This is her moment. The spinning Cornucopia will suck him down into the abyss. Tonight, his beautiful boy-face will be a firework in the sky. His beautiful face. Oh, how beautiful. That determined jaw, which had ticked as they waltzed in the ballroom, that deep-set bedroom stare, and his buttery smile—directed at others, of course—which had made him look like a puppy and a deity at the same time, melting women at the gala into a puddle.

Fuck him. Once he's drowned, everyone will regret doubting her. They will praise her, and her grandfather will finally, for once in her life, be proud of her. He will love her. Finally. Yes.

_No!_

Katniss blinks. No? _No?_

It's only after the words, "Okay, that's enough," have mindlessly shot from her lips, echoing in the control room, that she realizes what she's done. She's even gone so far as to lift her hand, palm up, to signal her minions without realizing it.

Stricken, she glares at the hologram. The water has settled, allowing Mellark to breach the surface and crawl back onto the hill. Goddammit! What has she been thinking? She had the boy at her mercy, but she let him go. She gave him another chance.

The controllers gawk at her, their features all asking the same thing: Why the hell did she tell them to stop?

Katniss rams her nails into her forehead in a panic. "Wait. Wait, I—I . . ."

There's still time to repeat the order. She can send him spinning again. He's fatigued and will fly back into the waves even faster. She can—

The door sweeps open. The minions rise in unison as her grandfather glides into the room, wearing a neutral expression that she distrusts immediately. Behind him, filling the doorway to capacity, is Plutarch Heavensbee, that propaganda troll with the boxy shoulders and invisible neck.

Katniss curls her lips into a silent snarl.

"My dear," Snow says, his voice as cold as ice. "Come with me, please. Plutarch can take over for now."

"But," she begins, then shuts her mouth when her grandfather freezes her with a private, blustery look. Once more, she leaves the room, purposefully knocking her shoulder into Heavensbee on her way out, just for good measure.

Snow is eerily quiet as he guides her out of the building, where her car and regular driver idle on the street. Her grandfather opens the back door for her. Repressing the urge to protest, she slips into the leather interior, swallowing as he leans in. "Get some rest," he says. "You're exhausting your resources."

With that, he slams the door. The car rumbles to life and glides down the street.

She's escorted back to her suite at the presidential mansion, where she throws a proper fit, pacing the span of the bedroom in a black silk ankle-length nightgown and matching robe, her bare feet wearing out the ornate, dandelion-patterned rug. Demoted—that's what she is. That pompous son of a bitch Plutarch, the man she beat for her position, had stared at her as though he expected this to happen. He expected her to fail and give him the opportunity to sink his talons into her job. Hell, he's had plenty of time to manipulate Snow into losing faith in her.

That couldn't have been difficult, not with her idiotic mistake regarding Mellark. This is all his fault. He's the reason she hasn't slept in days.

She flings herself onto her bed and screams into an embroidered pillow. Somewhere in the middle of it, she passes out from exhaustion.

kpkpkpkpkp

_She reclines in the sand, in a shoreline away from home. The beach is circular, with a cornucopia in the center, the waves constantly receding, never approaching. Someone's in the water, beckoning her to come, come closer, come find him._

_Find him. He raises his arm and holds something tiny between his fingers, from so far away that she normally shouldn't be able to see it. It's a pearl. He's using it to bribe her._

_Shapes—figures—surround her suddenly, blocking out the boy in the water. The bodies are clouds, no different from one another, no better or worse, not evil or good. Sometimes she hears their gauzy pleas, their blurry screams, asking why she did this to them, why she trapped them here. She wants them to shut up, because they're hurting her ears._

_The sea glitters. The shapes vanish._

_The boy is still there, floating with the pearl, waiting for her. "I'm here. Always," he says in a luminescent voice. "And you? Are you with me?"_

_Yes. She's with him. She's never been anywhere else._

_But no. That's a lie. This isn't real!_

_She must have said that out loud because the shape bobs further and further from her, coasting toward the opposite side of the beach. It makes her cry out in regret. She squeezes her fist as though the pearl has somehow ended up in her hand._

_He disappears. He's gone._

_The sea changes. It shrinks into a lake, glistening in front of a log cabin, and the shore becomes a different kind of shore, one Katniss has never seen before, with cattails and grass and a forest beyond the fringes of the water. Her fingers tingle. A strong hand bounds itself to her, just for a moment. She worships and loathes the touch._

_The hand must know this, too. Because it releases her, leaves her alone once again . . ._

Shouts and gunfire from the corridor jolt her awake. Lurching upright, her pulse hammers in her throat. Her eyes widen at the crackling orange flames of the stack-stone fireplace across from her bed. Her home is under attack. By whom?

The clamor of footsteps rushing in all directions, bullets snapping, people howling, and bodies thudding to the ground invade the room. Tearing out of bed, Katniss grabs the bow and single arrow displayed over the fireplace just as the door to her private veranda flies open.

A man in a gray jumpsuit barges in with a gun strapped to his chest. They point their weapons at each other.

"Careful, sweetheart," the man drawls. "Mine's faster than yours."

Katniss pauses in shock. Shadows consume his face, but she knows that grainy voice and wry tone. They belong to Mellark's mentor, Haymitch Abernathy.

_What is happening?_

She doesn't have time to ask because someone from behind drops a blindfold over her head, and her arm feels the pinprick of a needle.

kpkpkpkpkp

When she wakes up, the cloth is still over her head. She thrashes about, growling and not caring if it makes her look like a lunatic.

"Ahh. The brat's up," slurs the same voice from her bedroom. "Morning, sweetheart."

She's yanked roughly to her feet. The blindfold pops from her head, the wands of light marching across the ceiling and disorienting her. The space is drenched in white, from the walls to the cold tiles beneath her feet, giving her goose bumps.

Awareness comes in bits and pieces. Handcuffs bite into her wrists. The side of her face throbs. Her fingers reach up and discover a bandage near her cheekbone—she vaguely recalls going ballistic and trying to fight back before that needle knocked her out. During her scuffle, some hothead lacking patience for the serum to work its magic must have taken the opportunity to hit her.

What the hell did they need to keep a cloth over her head for? She could have suffocated. There damn well better have been air holes in the blindfold.

Her dark hair is a nest of tangles. She's clad only in her black nightgown and robe, and there's a tear in the hem. A fucking tear! A Cinna LaRue original ruined!

Furious, she glares up and finds herself face-to-face with that swine, Abernathy, whose uniform, not to mention his very soul, reeks of drunkenness. He relishes her evident disgust. "Have a good rest?"

Movement alerts her to other occupants in the room. Her eyes cut across the space to Plutarch Heavensbee and that poppycock victor, Finnick Odair, who's looking less than stellar in his torn tribute uniform, and with his haunted expression . . . How is Odair here and not in the arena?

Katniss is nothing if not astute. After a swift assessment of the men's faces, and the fact that her wrists are bound, she catches on. The victor got out with Heavensbee and Abernathy's help, but they're not here to help _her_ because she's the enemy. She belongs to them now.

This is a rebellion, just as her grandfather feared.

_I'm Katniss Everdeen-Snow. I'm eighteen years old. I'm the president's granddaughter and the youngest gamemaker Panem has ever known. I'm dangerous and trained to kill, and I'm not going down without a good, long, hard fight. So go on. Give me everything you've got. I can take anyone._

_Anyone._

And then she feels another pair of eyes on her. A looming presence in the vicinity that draws her gaze from the men and over to the exit door, where a broad, stocky figure leans against it, his arms crossed over his taut muscles. Yes, his eyes are certainly on her, watching the scene with a sidelong glance. They're intense, calculating blue eyes, and their message is clear: If he could, he would sweep everyone aside and wrap his hands around her throat.

Peeta Mellark. The Mockingjay.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the reviews, guys!

It takes three grown men to restrain her. It starts when Peeta gets close enough for her to slam her palms—shackles be damned—into his chest and hammer him into an urn. High and mighty Mellark crashes against the only decorative object in the room, chunks of porcelain shattering all over the tiles. He stumbles, providing Katniss with a clean shot and an opportunity to land a crescent kick to his profile, but that's when his backup swoops in. They clamp their grimy, loathsome paws on her arms and legs to and haul her away from him.

"You son of a—" She claws at the air, fights the good fight. By the end of it, bite marks brand Abernathy's skin, Heavensbee's flabby face has scratches, and Odair is nursing a classic but painful blow to the nuts.

Peeta straightens and cuts across the room. His whipcord frame halts inches from her, the coarse material of his grey shirt chafing her nightgown. His irises are coal black, not like the immense blue that she's used to. His proximity, however, rouses the scents of _that one_ memory. A bakery, sugar glaze, and sacks of rye grain. Distrustful scents that penetrate the weaker part of her.

She and her nemesis fume at each other. Even with Abernathy's vice-like grip, Katniss tries to lurch toward Peeta in a last ditch effort to chomp his immaculate nose off.

Peeta doesn't flinch. Annoyance, bitterness, and, oddly, disappointment shadow his face.

"Well, you're a piece of work, aren't you?" he chides, his voice deadly calm.

Her nostrils flare. He hasn't seen anything yet.

He quirks an eyebrow and addresses his allies. "Get her out of my sight. I'll deal with her later."

Later? She's Katniss Everdeen-Snow. No one deals with her _later_ except her grandfather.

It also takes all three men to drag Katniss to her cell. "Coward!" she roars to Peeta, the words tolling through the halls. "You have these men do your dirty work? This is how the great Mockingjay deals with me? You're a cowaaaaaard, and I fucking hate youuuuu!"

"He doesn't care," Odair tells her.

"For Christ's sake, sweetheart. Shut up," Abernathy grunts.

She bites the mentor again. Her struggle buys her time to scan the perimeter. The corridor looks to be an underground tunnel painted a stale green, as cavernous and austere as the inside of a pipe, with a parade of more glaring industrial lights above. In her mind, she files away the number of rooms and adjacent halls they pass, including an infirmary, and the directions to her prison, which has a door that looks like it should be attached to a submarine. It's about six inches thick, and fat bolts trail across its frame.

One of the guards standing post outside the door is a boy no older than she is. He's tall and tickled pink to see her handcuffed. He smirks with pride at the bandage on her cheek, validation etched into his rugged and vaguely familiar face.

"Gale," Abernathy addresses the guard, motioning for him to open the door.

 _Ah-ha_ , Katniss thinks _._ Gale Hawthorne. District 12. Son of a coal miner. Peeta Mellark's best friend.

She'd studied the Mockingjay's file prior to the first Games, as she did with every tribute. Hawthorne and Mellark grew up together, their bond crossing the class divide of their puny district of merchants and Seam rats.

Hawthorne marches like a missile on legs as he thrusts open the cell door and steps aside, his gray eyes sharp on her. Abernathy shoves her inside the room. The instant she staggers to the center and regains her balance, the mentor pauses and looks down his nose at her. "You're mistaken. That boy knows exactly how to handle the likes of you. Just wait."

He retreats into the hall, with Odair close behind. The District 4 victor has developed a soulless gait, contrary to his usual swagger. She'd noticed that quickly, how he moves as if he's lost all motivation, as if it's been torn from him, as if he's lost something important—or maybe some _one_.

Unfortunately, Heavensbee remains in the cell. Thick lids sag over his eyes, giving him a placid look. Behind him, the Hawthorne boy leans against the doorframe, his gun cradled to his chest like he's showing it off, wanting her to see the weapon nice and clear.

Was Heavensbee the one who'd hit Katniss when they kidnapped her? Or had it been Hawthorne?

Heavensbee gestures to the wound on her cheek. "There was no need for that," he says, half-turning and projecting his voice so that Hawthorne will hear him.

No apology. Heavensbee's tone is gentlemanly and sophisticated, but he isn't sorry that she'd been hurt. Only that Hawthorne—now she knows it was that hothead who'd struck her—has made the rebels look barbaric.

"Is there a _need_ for the handcuffs?" Katniss drawls, raising her wrists.

"We'll decide when they come off," Heavensbee replies, then departs the cell.

Meh. She can't fault him for that answer, considering she might be able to take him and Hothead Hawthorne on her own. The temperamental guard positions himself in the hall, standing opposite her cell and giving her a look that says, _You and I aren't going anywhere._

The door groans closed, the bolts twisting in place on the other side. Katniss kills two mockingjays with one stone by treading the room like a caged tiger to blow off steam and assess her surroundings. Metal sheets for walls. A steel-barred window rather than an air vent. Zero cracks in the floor. A mattress thinner than a slice of bread, but no pillow or sheets or bed frame. Textbook precautions and spartan details that do little to fool her. She once had to break out of a simulated cell like this during training. An unembellished room is more conspicuous than these rebels would like to think.

They're watching her, listening to her tight breathing, measuring her vitals with devices she can't see. She knows how this works. They'll make her wait for days, starve her until the very sight of nightlock becomes a temptation, prevent her from sleeping by dousing her with ice cold water every hour. They'll wait until she's on the brink, ready to crawl out of her skin. They might light matches near her skin, close enough for her to feel the heat without being burned—a subtle but highly effective way to fray her nerves and keep her on edge. They might torture someone in front of her. They might do many things that she has seen done to others.

Katniss inhales, then exhales. She runs her palm along the wall, searching for a pulse, the buzzing line of energy, a flaw in their system. Hours go by as she checks every inch.

Nothing. Well fuck. For enemies, they aren't as stupid as she expected.

Or maybe they are, since at one point, Hawthorne grudgingly brings in a tray of lamb stew and a plastic cup of water. He mutters that she shouldn't get used to it. She wonders who would be dumb enough to nourish her so soon. The faded image of a bread loaf comes to mind, but she shakes it from her mind and kicks the provisions to the other side of the room.

Her hands itch to slap at the walls, but she rations her patience. She slumps onto the floor and whistles Peeta's signature tune, the one he learned from that Rue girl. She whistles over and over as the sun shifts in the window, night falls, and her voice scrapes at her throat. Yet she keeps whistling because, _hahaha_ , he will hear it. He will hear her mocking the Mockingjay, until it's time for him to retire to his lair, and then he will hear Katniss invading his dreams.

Her. There. With him. In his bed.

kpkpkpkpkp

She's still whistling the next morning, when the door grinds open and Hothead Hawthorne enters with another guard. Silly her, she'd expected it to take days for an interrogation. She passes a critical eye over the second rebel, who stations himself on one side of the door, while Hawthorne stands on the other side.

Twelve seconds later, Peeta Mellark steps inside.

After a careful glance around the room, he casts the guards a satisfied nod. When they leave, shutting the door behind them, Peeta leans his shoulder against the wall and, like yesterday, crosses his arms over his chest. They stare at one another. Happily, Katniss continues to whistle, prepared to drill the tune into his ears until they burst. He glares down at her with such an intricate mix of hard and soft features. The downward slant of his lids, that fierce jaw like a weapon, those vivid blues and ridiculous lashes.

Peeta's mouth lifts into a victorious smirk that dilutes her confidence. Katniss realizes that she's stopped whistling. He'd done nothing to distract her, yet she stopped whistling.

Satisfied, he taps on the cuff around his wrist. The door opens. The bastard leaves.

Her throat hurts so badly. Her stomach roars with hunger. This time, a container of cheese buns is brought in, prompting another memory that makes her chest hitch—these have to be from Peeta. Is he trying to send a message? Make a point?

She tears the cheese buns into bits and tosses them out the barred window.

On his second visit, she chooses complete silence. The guards bring in a couple of chairs and force her to sit in one, but she makes a show of reclining in her seat, relaxing into her shackles, as though she's perfectly at home. Peeta sits in the other chair, across from her. They fall into another bruising staring contest.

"Do you know why you're here?" he asks.

"You've got the wrong person," she drawls, wondering how long she can drag out the bullshit, run her enemy in circles, and exhaust him.

He quirks a brow and plays along. "Do we, now? We're looking for a gamemaker by the name of Katniss Everdeen-Snow, whose suite you happened to be found lounging in, and who happens to have one of the most recognizable faces in this country." He squints. "You look a lot like her."

"I'm not her."

"You have her eyes."

"I'm not her."

"And you have her scowl. I think she inherited it from her grandfather."

"What grandfather?" she deadpans.

He peers at her, unamused. She flashes him a cocky smile.

"Again," he says. "Do you know why you're here, Katniss Everdeen-Snow?"

"You were desperate to get me to notice you," she says. "Most young men are."

A fierce but indistinguishable emotion flashes in his eyes, but he hides it impressively fast. "You must be hungry," he taunts. "Any requests? More lamb stew or cheese buns to waste? Or . . . perhaps clothes?" He pays her nightgown the sort of explicit attention that replaces one type of hunger for another.

Intimidation? An attempt to fluster? Either way, it's working. It's working its way right through her, and it puts him higher on her hit list.

Two can play this game. Bold as she pleases, she lifts her limbs and rests her bare feet on his knee, crossing them at the ankles. The hem of her gown rides up her calf, exposing a shapely length of olive skin. Peeta tenses. Red sneaks up his neck before he jerks his leg away, causing her feet to fall and smack the floor.

"Eventually, you'll want something," he insists, then regards her with mild disgust. "You're not used to doing without, I'd say."

Her arrogance cannot resist. "Doing without?" she repeats with a scoff. "And how do you think gamemakers are trained?"

He frowns. "Meaning what?"

"Meaning in order to control an arena—"

"Let's get something straight: It's not an arena. It's Hell."

"—we have to know how to survive in one ourselves. Meaning we're tributes long before you are." To her shame, her words trip as she recalls being thrust into a forest without so much as a pat on the head from her grandfather. No sign that he worried about her safety. He'd merely told her not to embarrass him, sipped his Merlot, and fretted over a fly that had landed in the crimson liquid.

A fly. He'd been preoccupied with a fly.

Katniss shakes herself. "Anyhow, don't play the imbecile. I'm sure Plutarch has filled you in about our training. I'm more used to starving than you think. I know what suffering is. I know what it means to be hurt."

Peeta's eyes lose their aggressive luster. "Yet it didn't change what you've become."

She sucks in a breath at his suddenly mournful expression. It resurrects a moment from years ago, untarnished and stupidly sweet in her mind. Is he hoping to gauge how much she remembers of their past, or if she remembers at all?

It's her pleasure to feign ignorance. The memory serves no purpose and is hardly important.

He got her to speak, but she won't let him out of here with the last word. "You're a fool if you think taking me hostage will work. My grandfather isn't going to protect me over preserving his country."

"I know," he answers. "You're not a hostage. You're a prisoner of war with information about Snow that we need."

Despite the shackles, she flattens her hands on her thighs and leans toward him. "And I'm supposed to make myself expendable by giving it to you? Go fuck yourself."

He matches her position, coming nose-to-freckled-nose with her. "At the risk of sounding cliche, we can do this the easy way or the hard way."

She bursts out laughing and lands back in her seat. "You really aren't good at this."

Peeta grimaces, wonderfully defensive and uncertain. "How would you know? Last time I looked, you oversaw arenas—"

"Oooh, I thought they were Hell," Katniss quotes him.

"Your skill is making victims out of innocent kids," Peeta bites out. "Snow's leash on you doesn't extend to interrogating criminals or making judgment calls about them."

With a sigh, Katniss cranes her head back and talks to the ceiling. "The way you've been walking tells me that you have a knife tucked into the back of your right boot and another strapped to your left hip. The former is new to you, but you've been training with the latter for much longer. No guns because you're not good with them—you leave that to the guards who came in here exactly six minutes and forty-two seconds ago. I counted four weapons between them, two belted at their waists and the two hidden under the napes of their necks. Hawthorne's reliable, but he and his partner aren't as whipped into shape as they should be, considering their uniforms are spotless and their nails are pearly white. I'd say those knuckleheads are used mostly for show—at least for now.

"Abernathy and Heavensbee are watching us through the monitor embedded into a hole the size of a pinprick in the ceiling, right above your head. Oh, and you have a syringe stashed under your left sleeve, in case I become difficult. I know the questions you'll ask me, I know how you'll try to tame me, and I know the tools you'll use to do it. My point?" She lowers her head and attempts to stab him with her words. "Don't fucking assume anything about me."

Peeta gives this some good-natured thought, then stands and wipes his hands. "And here I thought you were sharper."

Katniss blinks. _Where is he going with this?_

"Thank you," he says. "That wasn't as hard as I thought it would be." An ambiguous grin etches into his face. "Now we know exactly who we're dealing with. And what to avoid. Looks like we'll have to get creative with you. But don't worry," he amends when her eyes round in fury. "You've at least earned more water."

The temperature rises ten degrees. Perspiration gathers in her fists. _Duped_ , she realizes. He duped her into bragging and lured her ego into his net. The oldest tactic in existence, and she fell for it. He reduced her to it in less than eight minutes.

Water is brought in. Peeta offers her the plastic cup. She snatches it and pours the contents into her mouth, turning away from him to concentrate on guzzling deeply. Her cheeks start to fill up.

The Mockingjay braces his hands on the back of his now-vacant chair and bends close to her again. "Learn this lesson well, Katniss," he warns. "You don't want to get into a verbal chess battle with me. You will not win—"

She lurches forward and spews a mouthful of water into in his face. It splatters him from forehead to chin.

Peeta's eyes snap shut, his mouth tightening into a line. The shackles bite into her wrists, but she doesn't care. This close she can see prisms slicing through the droplets hanging from his lashes, and hear his tempered breathing clashing with her own.

At last, his eyelids flip open. Those irises are wells, cool and bottomless. More thirsty than ever, Katniss licks her chapped lips.

kpkpkpkpkp

After her wrists turn raw, they only handcuff her whenever Peeta's in her cell. It's not the last time that she tries to stoke his temper. Sometimes when he comes to her, she jumps up, wearing the disgusting gray D13 jumpsuit they've supplied her with, and gives him a mock impersonation of a respectful solider, snapping to attention and barking, "Sir!"

Sometimes she throws her meal tray at him the minute he enters the room, though he's been wise enough not to give her utensils.

Sometimes Katniss makes a show of cracking her knuckles when he enters, like she's been waiting to play all day. To a gross extent, she has. It's diverting to see who will win the next round.

Sometimes she uses a candied voice while giving him vague and unhelpful answers to his questions. Sometimes she ignores his questions, in favor of criticizing his taste in friends instead. Sometimes she goes so far as to talk about Delly Cartwright, which produces a flicker of pain in his eyes—a flicker that Katniss doesn't enjoy, isn't proud of causing, wants to scrub from his face—before he masks it with a withering stare.

None of her antics work. Worse, Peeta selects methods of torture that would be intriguing if they weren't, well, torture. He reads aloud from a book on the history of rocks and chats about the endless varieties of grain that have existed over the ages.

She whistles Rue's tune to bait him again. In response, he just feigns sympathy, saying, "You must be starved for music. I'll have Haymitch play something for you." Minutes after he leaves her cell, an unsavory, melodramatic song from a Capitol musical blasts through the speaker walls. It plays on loop for twenty-four hours.

Another time, he sharpens a pair of scissors in front of her, producing a repetitive, wincing sound. Nothing threatening, but everything maddening, able to cripple any person other than Katniss. It does make her crankier, though.

She keeps a tally of the weeks in her mind. The rebels give her more food than political prisoners would have a prayer of receiving in the Capitol. They allow her to wash in a basin that the guards haul into her cell.

She goes over the map in her head about the hallway layout when she first got here. She tries to make sense of the guard rotation that Peeta has ordered, but she can't, because it appears that he listened to her too well when she boasted about her knowledge of security. She can't even tell anymore where the guards or Peeta have stashed their weapons within their clothes.

She would have thought Peeta Mockingjay Mellark would enjoy holding his evil gamemaker enemy prisoner, having the chance to crack her spirit in half. Yet, most of the time, he fluctuates between grimaces and some other expression, one with a wounded edge to it. Clearly, she must be seeing things.

He has lots of nervous twitches. He scratches the back of his neck when he's perplexed. He pokes his tongue into his cheek when he's trying to figure out whether she's serious. He pauses his speech when she flips her hair over her shoulder. He makes a fist at his side whenever someone is obviously speaking to him through a hidden earpiece—most likely it's Abernathy, the sloppy drunkard.

At night she wonders why Peeta bothers doing all the interrogation work instead of letting one of his partners do it for him. He's the symbol of the rebellion. He must have other pressing matters to deal with. Yet every day, he spends nearly three hours bumping heads with her, giving her far too many opportunities to stare at his mouth.

He has thin, pink lips. Most women would envy the natural color of those lips and go insane wanting to taste them. In the dark and quiet room, Katniss often curses herself, aware that she's now a member of that club. It becomes a routine before she falls asleep, her thinking about his mouth on the verge of a frown, a glower, a smile. She always comes to the same conclusion.

_He has the same mouth as when he was a child._

That's the vision that usually causes her to drift into slumber: Little Peeta Mellark chewing on a piece of cheesy bread, grinning at her in between bites. So kind and innocent.

Not innocent anymore, though. Definitely not trustworthy. She has a bad feeling, _a very bad feeling_ , that soon he's going to figure out how to break her.


	3. Chapter 3

Katniss is yanked out of a deep sleep as one of the walls in her cell flashes to life. It turns into a screen that broadcasts news of the rebellion, the volume buzzing around her. She lurches upright from her pallet, her eyes practically swallowing the scenes before her: footage of mayhem in the districts, fires, stampedes, rebel attacks on residential areas of the Capitol. According to a recap of events, on the night she was captured the rebels had infiltrated the presidential mansion, but they hadn't succeeded in overtaking it. They'd only managed to cut down a sizable chunk of her grandfather's security, grab Katniss, and retreat.

She'd been desperate to learn what was going on, yet she'd kept that desperation locked inside her, refusing to ask the rebels questions, knowing they would use her vulnerability as ammo against her. But the news she's been hungry for is right here, in this room, in her face. She can't avoid it. She's in danger of exposing herself.

From somewhere outside this cell, the rebels are watching her. The Mockingjay is watching her. He's waiting to see her reaction.

When the coverage shifts to a correspondent, she notices the dark sky behind him. It's nighttime on the screen, when it should be morning. This isn't a _live_ broadcast. It's a recorded one. It must contain something . . . something that Peeta wants Katniss to see.

An anguished, mortifying sound leaves her throat as her grandfather materializes on the wall. He sits behind his desk in his study, speaking to the camera with that composed yet elegantly dangerous expression he always wears. His wide eyes are ice, his hair frost, and his lips blood. The first time Katniss saw those lips bleeding, she was three years old. She cried all day, thinking that he was dying. Her mother and father were dead, so they weren't there to calm her down. Her grandfather had raised her, but he never explained to her what was wrong with his mouth. He left it up to the nanny to ease Katniss's worries with hot milk and a fairytale about princes that didn't exist—even at three, Katniss already knew that. Princes didn't exist. Nor did kings.

Her grandfather existed, though. He'd always made sure everyone _knew_ that he existed, that he didn't need to come from royal stock to have power. He wielded it with a soft-spoken tongue and clever turns of phrase, which made people in the Capitol subscribe to his manifestos—including Katniss.

Which is why she rushes to the screen and places her hand against it, right over the old man's heart. She wishes he could see her. She licks her lips, waiting for him to send her a secret message, or to say something about her capture, to demand the people's support for her safe return. He will do it. He's worried about her. Of course, he is.

She's been a good granddaughter, always behaved, always did what he required of her, always sat up straight and stayed quiet and didn't play with her food at state dinners, always curtsied and sang for his guests, always entertained his thoughts at breakfast while he admired her side-braid and she dug into her boiled egg with poise. Always agreed with him, always served him, always concealed the hurt she felt whenever she was ill and he refused to come her bedside. He never read her any of those fairytales.

Disappointment would often creep into his voice whenever he said that Katniss looked like her father more than her mother. So Katniss always befriended the people her grandfather declared most "appropriate" for her, wore the stoic shades of gray and black that he liked best on her, always feeling guilty when she sported something green (be it a gown or a barrette in her hair). She always tried being the person he _expected_ her to be, not the one she _yearned_ to be, because she didn't even know who that was, what kind of girl she would be, if it were up to her. She always learned what he wanted her to learn, like the sciences and combat fighting, practicing in concrete courtyards instead of hunting through the beautiful forests east of the mansion, learning how to aim a gun instead of a bow. And the one time she gathered her courage and expressed an interest in archery, her grandfather sneered with contempt (because they both knew that Katniss's father used to carry a bow), and so Katniss never brought it up again.

And yes, she had a bow displayed on her bedroom wall, but that had been an exception, when he permitted her to indulge because the son of a visiting dignitary had expressed his fondness for archery and wanted Katniss to accompany him on a hunting trip. Her grandfather approved of the boy, so Katniss got a bow in exchange for a quasi date with a spoiled politician's son (who groped her every chance they were alone, and she let him, because her grandfather would have been angry if she didn't), and it established good political relations in the end (and thankfully she was allowed to keep the bow).

And she always smiled when her grandfather talked about her future as a gamemaker, and always felt a rush of power and pride when she excelled at her training, and she fed off that rush when she presided over her first Games. And she always strove to get better, always for her grandfather, always for him.

Because who else does she have?

Always. She's always been the perfect, predatory "princess" for him—as if princesses exist in the first place, any more than princes do. And why would her grandfather want her to be something that isn't real, that lives only in history and stories?

He must be about to speak on her behalf, to warn the rebels to treat her well. She's earned it, hasn't she?

_I am Katniss Everdeen-Snow. That must count for something. I must matter to him._

"My fellow citizens," her grandfather begins, and then glides into his speech with dignity and quiet ferocity, assuring his people that the radicals won't succeed in their mission to bring the Capitol down. He praises his army, reaffirms the glory of their great nation, which will prevail against the perpetrators.

"We will avenge those who've been sacrificed," he says.

And then, in a spectacularly well-played political move, he falsely declares his granddaughter dead.

kpkpkpkpkp

Dead. He just said she was dead.

Katniss's knees hit the floor.

Darkness washes over her.

Nothing. Dead.

kpkpkpkpkp

She wakes up on the mattress, dry-mouthed and sweating. How did she get here? The last thing she remembers is that she fainted on the tiles.

It comes back to her: her grandfather telling the world that the rebels killed her. He knows it's not true. Peeta had said they weren't planning to use her as a bargaining chip, because they knew Snow wouldn't give in, that they wanted her for information instead. They may not be communicating with her grandfather, but she _knows_ in her gut that Snow believes she's alive. It would make no sense for the rebels to kill her so quickly. She knows the way he thinks. Moves and counter-moves.

Instead of using her capture to rally his people, he went beyond that. He declared her dead to ensure an even greater response, to up the ante and stir their ire. He turned Katniss into a Capitol martyr.

He's not expecting her to live. He's not planning for her to be rescued.

In fact, he's counting on her dying. He's relying on it. Yes, this move will get the reaction he wants, and if she turns up miraculously alive at the war's end—well, that's fine, too. People will rejoice, and he will still have made the impression he wanted.

But it's better if her death is real. That's what he's thinking. The more real it is, the more it cements his people's intolerance toward rebellion for the future.

He wants Katniss to die. He wants the rebels to know that he doesn't care if she dies. He doesn't care what she tells them, because he has back-up plans, moves that he _thinks_ she doesn't know about.

He's wrong. She knows more than he assumes, because she's eavesdropped on his secret meetings and conversations. Yet it doesn't matter now. The point is, she was never worth telling everything to.

_I'm expendable. I'm a piece in his game._

_He is the true gamemaker._

kpkpkpkpkp

Her heart is broken. But her mind is not broken. She will not let the rebels take that from her.

She sleeps and sleeps. And dreams and dreams. In that blissful state, someone's hand brushes a tendril of hair from her cheek. The touch feels like the sun. It's enough to make her sigh. She longs to fall into that touch and never wake up again.

kpkpkpkpkp

She allows her heart to turn to stone, welcomes the numbing sensation, and it works until the rebels make their next move. After days of lying comatose and barely nibbling her food, Peeta walks in. He's wearing a loose white shirt and dark pants that drop into a pair of lace-up boots. It's nothing special, but his body has ways of making _nothing special_ look quite the opposite on him. He's blessed physically, better than any Capitolite she's ever been forced to date.

It's the first time she's seen Peeta since before the video fiasco. He should be looking smug, striding in with a bounce in his step, because of the mess he's made of Katniss.

He doesn't. He walks in slowly, his shoulders hunched beneath an invisible weight, shadows lurking across his pretty face, a dullness clouding his eyes. A pitying dullness? No. It's worse than that.

He looks like a sad little boy. A sad little boy that she once knew.

Katniss doesn't have the will to stand, but she does have the will to feign indifference. She reclines against the wall and props up one leg in nonchalance. She's ashamed, though, because Peeta's lip twitches in weak admiration. She doesn't fool him. When has she ever fooled him?

Her gaze drifts down to his hands. Strong hands that might possess the warmth of the sun. Reminded of her dream—was it even a dream?—she lifts her head, searching his face, despising herself for the need she suddenly feels.

He looks away. So does she.

_No. I can't afford to think like this._

Someone else, not him, must have carried her to the mattress when she fainted after the broadcast. And the touch was nothing but a stupid dream.

Peeta clears his throat, dragging the words out like they weigh a ton. "There are some people we'd like you to meet."

"The firing squad?" she jokes.

He's not amused. She would go so far as to say he hates the mere mention of it, but that's because his jaw clenches, and she's obviously misinterpreting the reason. More than likely, she's just annoying him as usual.

Peeta opens the door and lets in a dark-skinned woman, a civilian from the looks of her frail arms and dazed expression. That dazed expression turns to rage when the woman looks upon Katniss. Rage and grief—the woman seems like she's about to howl from those emotions.

When Peeta rests a hand on the woman's shoulder, it gives her the strength to approach Katniss and sit on the floor across from her, while Peeta leans against a wall, staring at the ground as if out of respect. Respect for what?

Confusion grips Katniss by the neck. "What is this?" she demands to Peeta. "Why is she here?"

The woman answers for him, her words like poison. "Because my son's name was Thresh. And you killed him."

kpkpkpkpkp

After her grandfather's betrayal, Katniss thought there wasn't anything left to squash her with. Yet she's shocked into silence. She's seen the faces of the tributes' families and friends—during reapings and victory tours. However, she has never seen those faces up close, been judged by them, convicted by them. She's not prepared for the fear that seizes her.

This is how it goes for the next five hours. One by one, Peeta escorts a victim into Katniss's cell, where she's subjected to tears and fury, people shouting at her, people sobbing, while she's unable to plug her ears, turn away, and ignore them. She's cornered like a rat, trapped by their stories, memories of their children, friends, neighbors. Kids who loved spring, painting, dancing, music, swimming, poetry, sports, school. Kids who wanted to be _somebody_ when they got older—an artist, a farmer, a scientist—and kids who just wanted to survive the mines. Kids afraid of becoming parents someday. Kids who fantasized about a better world. Kids who wanted to make a difference, make their families proud.

Kids who were sent to the Games and didn't return. Tributes that Katniss designed arenas for. Victims who died on her watch.

Over and over, it goes. The tales. The things she didn't know about those kids, wouldn't have cared to know, because that would have made them human to her.

"My son . . . "

"My daughter . . ."

"My cousin . . ."

"My sister . . ."

"My best friend . . ."

"My brother . . ."

"My nephew . . ."

"My neighbor . . ."

"My niece . . ."

"My boyfriend . . ."

"My child . . ."

"My granddaughter."

Katniss feels her chin trembling, her throat tightening, her spirit breaking. She thinks of her parents, of the life she could have had, of the one she ended up with instead. A life of endless training and parties and politics and loneliness.

And then . . . then she stops thinking of herself. She thinks only of these people, who have more fortitude than she will ever have, who've braved their feelings in order to see her. How much they loved their children. How much they hurt. How much she's to blame.

They look at her with the same silent question: _Why?_

The look at her in the same way: _Evil. Monster. Killer._

Katniss wants to speak, defend herself, apologize, explain. But she loses her voice, her shield, and what's left of her resolve shatters.

When the torture is over, Peeta guides the last victim from the cell. Just before he leaves, he twists his head over his shoulder, as if to make sure Katniss is still in one piece, as if he's not sorry about what he did, but he's sorry that it crippled her. Why does he bother? How can he care, after what they both heard in this room?

The door swoops closed. The lights go out. She's alone again. She sinks onto the mattress and curls into a ball. Then she digs her nails into the barely-cushioned surface. She wishes she were an insect, insignificant but free to slip between the cracks. She beats her forehead with her palms until her skull feels like a balloon has burst inside it.

Her eyes are rough as burlap. Her heart is nowhere.

Katniss vibrates with exhaustion, but she's wide-awake. It's probably a good thing, because she might have nightmares if she falls asleep. Then she'd have to wake up to Peeta Mellark's demon-angel gaze.

Is it possible to escape to a happy place? She grazes the mattress with the tip of her finger, round and round. She hums a tune—from that girl, Rue—embellishing the melody with an occasional whimper. She keeps twirling her finger, twirling, twirling, remembering twirling bodies on a dance floor, a twirling cornucopia, twirling limbs in the water.

Precious numbness. Lying on the ground isn't so bad.

kpkpkpkpkp

And . . . that's when she starts crying. After hours of no sleep, and the tingling behind her eyelids, and the endless loop of stories, and faces invading her mind, Katniss cries for what she's done. She cries so hard that her body shudders. She cries so hard that her hiccups fill the room. She cries so fucking hard.

While she's crying, the latch to the cell door opens. Footfalls come nearer and nearer, but she doesn't glance up to spit at whoever has entered. Nor does she stifle her weeping, the humiliation of it, the fact that she's lost this final game. She's done. So done.

The mattress sags beneath someone's weight. She feels that warmth again, like a sunbeam, as a hand envelops her own and squeezes. She's not dreaming. The scent of him, sweet and comforting, proves it.

Katniss's hand squeezes back, then she presses his knuckles to her cheek and hears his masculine intake of breath. She allows him to sweep away a lock of hair, just as he did after the broadcast—yes, it _must_ _have_ been him. She takes refuge in his presence, savoring what no one has ever offered to her until now: pure, unconditional tenderness.

"Why are you doing this?" she whispers, her voice scraped raw.

Peeta is silent for a long time. Finally, he whispers back, "Because you have a conscience. Somewhere inside you, you're still a good person. I've seen it." Katniss hears him swallow and say what's been in the back of their minds this whole time. "Because . . . I remember about the bread."


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Halfway point, guys...

_Katniss wanted to wear the green dress because the material reminded her of leaves. But her grandfather wanted her to wear the scarlet one. She bit her tongue, didn't fuss, and let her maid—who grumbled about the color being inappropriate for a girl of only ten years—drop the red frock over Katniss's head._

_After the maid weaved her hair into two braids, Katniss ran—even though the maid scolded her never to run—to the train window. Rising on her tippy toes, she peeked over the sill, craning her head to better see as their convoy glided into the station. District 12 wasn't as pretty as the other places they'd been so far. It was dark and sad-looking, the sky clogged with smoke, and the ramshackle houses in the distance looked as though they would tip over if someone pressed a finger to them._

_Katniss wasn't even sure they were houses, or cottages, or even cabins. They looked like places to keep livestock, not to live in. There weren't any gardens. No places to play!_

_The people waiting at the station—the children her age—were dressed in ugly shades of brown and grey. There was no color anywhere, not in their clothes, or their eyes, or their cheeks. Katniss crossed her arms over her chest, feeling like a pearl in the middle of a dirt field. Her grandfather liked to show her off, but it made her feel strange—especially in a scary district like this, where the smell of soot crept into the train, and people wore little more than_ _rags_ _._

" _Why are they dressed like that?" Katniss asked her maid, when the woman came to stand beside her._

 _The maid wrinkled her nose. "_ _Because that's what peasants wear."_

" _But why?"_

" _Because they know their place. It tells us who's who in this world._ _"_

" _Oh," Katniss said. "Okay."_

_Okay? She didn't know if it was okay, but if that's what the grownups thought, then it must be true._

_She_ _tried not to feel silly_ _when her grandfather arrived in a silk suit, with a rose _peeking out of his breast pocket_ and matching her dress. It was a chilly autumn day, so the maid wrapped Katniss in a red coat made of a soft material called cashmere._

_Her grandfather escorted her out of the train and onto the dais. The District 12 children looked at her either wide-eyed or blank-faced, and she didn't know which expression she hated more. Her grandfather had promised to take her with him on this tour of Panem, but it wasn't as much fun as Katniss thought it would be. The speeches were boring, the parties were boring, and her maid was boring. She had friends at home, but while she was away, there were no children to entertain her._

_She held her head high but avoided the weary gazes of the other children, fixing her gaze on the only sturdy-looking building in the distance. A brick structure with one magical word painted across the top:_ Bakery.

_A bakery! Katniss stared at the building until the speech was over, then tugged on her grandfather's jacket until he finally glanced down at her._

" _What is it, my dear?" he asked._

" _Cakes," she said calmly, because he didn't like it when she squealed or displayed too much excitement. "May we, please?" She pointed at the building, because he'd also promised to buy her treats during their trip. And maybe her dress wouldn't stand out so much in a place filled with confections and pastries._

_Her grandfather allowed the visit, but he didn't accompany her. He had "essential people" to meet with—those were his words, spoken fluidly despite Katniss's sourpuss._

_Her maid took her instead. Katniss liked to misbehave whenever her grandfather wasn't around, so she took off at a mad sprint, ignoring the older woman's humphs and warnings about falling, laughing at how easy it was to fluster servants. It wasn't as if their opinions counted anyway. That's what her grandfather and friends always said._

_Katniss wrenched the bakery door open and gazed around in surprise. She hadn't expected every morsel on display to look so fetching: cookies with sugar flower petals, latticed pies, and all things chocolate. The choices weren't as fancy as Capitol desserts, but they were more real, like she could eat them without feeling guilty that she was damaging something._

_The maid remained outside, fanning herself, while two Peacekeepers entered and stationed themselves by the door. Katniss rolled her eyes. They were always following her around. She pretended they weren't there and flattened her palms against the glass counter, unable to decide—not that she_ had _to decide. She could order everything in this bakery, if she wanted. Ha!_

" _The cheesy buns are good," a little voice suggested._

_A boy's voice. It sounded kind but nervous, maybe a bit shy._

_Katniss wheeled around. The eyes staring back at her stunned her speechless, making heat race across her cheeks. Blue. Lots of blue. Wow-blue. A boy with wow-blue eyes and sunny hair._

_He was her age. He wore a white apron and kept his hands tucked in his pockets like he was protecting them. Yet he stared at her, so directly, welcoming her to stare back._

_She wasn't used to boys. Not dirty ones. Not poor ones._

_When she kept gaping at him like a dummy, he grinned. One of his teeth was crooked. Cute_. . . _Cute? Bleeeeh. He was a boy!_

_Katniss turned up her chin and quirked a brow. "Cheesy buns?"_

_The boy pointed to the fat bread rolls topped with melted cheddar. "They're not sweet, but they're yummy and warm. I mean, I can warm one up for you."_

_For some reason, she couldn't resist asking, "Are they your favorite?"_

_He shook his head. "I wouldn't know."_

" _Why?"_

" _I don't know what our food tastes like."_

_Katniss snorted. He was teasing her. How could he work here and not know what the food tastes like?_

" _Don't lie," she said._

" _I'm not lying," he said, a defensive blush spreading like wildfire to his ears. "I'm not allowed to try anything. My family thinks it will spoil me. I once stole a spoonful of frosting and got in a lot of trouble."_

" _Then how do you know the cheesy buns are yummy?"_

" _We sell a lot of them," he explained with a shrug. "And I just think you'd like them best."_

_Katniss cocked her head. All right. Maybe he wasn't lying._

_With her scarlet dress and coat, and her shiny shoes, and her Peacekeeper entourage, he truly thought the cheesy bread rolls were the best for her? Not the Bundt cakes or the_ _é_ _clairs? He must have heard the president was here. Didn't he know who she was?_

_She surveyed the abundance of choices, then regarded the boy's hopeful face. He wanted to be right, she realized._

" _I would love one," she lied._

_The grin that split his face threatened to make her giggle. It tickled her stomach to please this boy, even though he was beneath her. It shouldn't be this easy to please someone. It never was back home._

_He warmed the cheesy bun on a plate and handed it over, then watched her take a demure bite. And oh! It was all gooey and buttery-soft on her tongue. Oh wow wow wow! Yay!_

_She gobbled up the whole thing with her hands. The boy appeared to be lots of things, in that moment: relieved, proud, happy. Yet he also watched her, almost_. . . _almost in wonder as the bun disappeared before his very eyes. She did not miss how his gaze feasted on the crumbs that landed on the floor after she wiped her hands. For some reason, his expression tugged at her._

" _I'll take another one," she said._

_This made the boy forget the crumbs. He laughed, and she would have, too—because he had a way about him—except that a mountain's worth of woman stomped into the room and interrupted them. "Hey!" she squawked at the boy, making him jump and take a step back. "What did I tell you about serving customers?"_

" _I'm sorry," the boy blurted, fear contorting his face. "I just wanted to help—"_

" _Your brother should be out here, not you, you little fiend. Fixing to steal something when the shop is empty, eh?"_

" _No," he said, aghast._

" _Don't lie," the woman said._

 _Katniss winced to hear this fat, angry stranger clucking the same words that she'd said to the boy a few minutes ago_ : Don't lie.

_She gaped as the woman's ham-hock fingers seized the boy by his collar and shoved him across the bakery, so harshly that he had to grab onto a counter to keep from falling. "Go on. Get in the kitchen where you belong!" the woman said._

_Red-faced, the boy twisted around to look at Katniss one last time, as if to apologize, before rushing through a swinging door at the back of the room. No one—not this evil woman or the Peacekeepers—seemed to care about his pitiful exit._

_Katniss cared. She thought about how she would feel to be handled that way. She recalled what the boy said about never tasting the food. She remembered the way he stared at the crumbs._

_She understood: This woman, whoever she was, wasn't taking care of him._

" _Now, can I help . . ." The woman turned, her gaze landing on Katniss for the first time, her pudgy face going slack as she registered the fine clothes and the Peacekeepers looming by the door. Her fingers fluttered to her chest, and she began to coo, "Oh, Miss Everdeen-Snow. What an honor. I beg your pardon about the boy. He's nobody. A simpleton. I don't know why I keep him around, except that he's my son."_

_The air suddenly smelled stale and gross. Katniss could have vomited the cheesy bun all over the woman's shoes._

_But Katniss could do better than that. She put on her best airs and stuck up her Capitol nose in displeasure. "The boy hasn't offended me," she said haughtily. "You have."_

_Katniss loved, absolutely loved, seeing the woman's face pale. Katniss threw in a lie and said, "The boy was helping me choose pastries for my grandfather. You might know him as the president of this country. I was sent here to purchase some treats, but I didn't know what the best ones were, until the boy came to my rescue. He has fine taste and didn't deserve to be yelled at, and I didn't deserve to have my fun cut off by the lowly likes of you. My grandfather wouldn't be happy to hear I was subjected to a show of violence, or that my trip here was ruined because of it. There's no telling would he would do," she warned, the threat sliding easily off her tongue. "So if you know what's good for you, you will take your temper, and your greasy hair, and your even greasier apron, and your ill-bred posture, and your fake charm, and disappear. Or I'll take my money somewhere else."_

" _I'm so sorry," the woman bumbled. "I didn't realize. I—"_

" _And you will treat the boy nicely from now on. Let him eat whatever he wants and do_ not _touch him. We have ways of watching people from the Capitol, and if you're mean to that boy, I'll know. And if I know, my grandfather will know, and you'll answer to him."_

" _Of course. I—"_

" _Now, let me pass."_

_The woman wobbled to the side as Katniss breezed past her, grabbed a plate from a shelf, and piled it with cheesy buns, then flounced off in a whirlwind of scarlet cashmere. Giddiness burst in her chest. That was a cinch!_

_When she stepped through the kitchen door, she saw the boy wiping down empty cooling racks with a rag. At the creak of the hinges, he whipped around, flinching as if expecting a beating or something. Katniss hated that older woman even more for this._

_She held up her free hand. "It's just me."_

_The boy's shoulders dropped. "You're not supposed to be back here."_

" _I'm the president's granddaughter. I can go wherever I want," she answered, hopping onto a prep table and patting the space beside her._

_The boy glanced at the closed door, then hid the rag in his apron pocket, shuffled across the kitchen, and settled next to her. Their short legs dangled over the side. The boy hung his head, but she tipped her own head down to catch his gaze, holding on until he looked up, and that's when she saw the tears drying on his cheeks._

_She swallowed. "She won't bother you again. I promise. But you should really learn to suck it up when you're sad, or people will just make you sadder."_

" _Is that what you do?" he asked._

" _You get used to it."_

_He offered her a watery smile. "You're not a good liar."_

_Katniss chewed on her lip. She was talented enough to fool his mother, and everyone else, but not him. "Maybe someday I will surprise you. I'll be tougher."_

" _I like you the way you are now."_

_Katniss wanted to ask why. Instead, she held out the plate and said gently, "Are you hungry?"_

_His wow-blue eyes sparkled with disbelief. He licked his lips. "Really?"_

" _Sure. It's okay. They're yours."_

_He ate every last cheesy bun, sighing and chuckling in between bites. "I knew they'd be good."_

_Katniss liked watching him eat even more than watching Capitol cartoons. She wanted to stay here with him. She didn't want to go back to the train, but soon the Peacekeepers would come to collect her, she was certain. There wasn't much time left._

" _What's your name?" she asked._

" _Peeta," he said, showing off his crooked tooth again._

_Peeta. Odd. As odd as her name._

" _Pleased to meet you, Peeta," she said, holding out her hand to shake his. "I'm Katniss."_

kpkpkpkpkp

Somehow, their clasped hands find their way beneath Katniss's cheek, like a makeshift pillow. She listens to Peeta recount the story, a moment that happened a lifetime ago. It's impossible to reconcile the little girl she was back then to the one she has become. If it weren't for the memory of her standing up to Peeta's mother, a ten year-old actually taking down an adult with regal snobbery and the razor-sharp words of dignitary, Katniss wouldn't have believed that child was once her.

Peeta has no trouble believing it, though. "You showed me kindness," he whispers in the dark. "You, a girl from the Capitol, showed me kindness when not even my mother would."

"I didn't do much," she croaks.

"You did _so_ much," he argues. "My mother never laid a hand on me again. She let me eat a dozen cookies for breakfast, if I wanted."

They share a weak laugh. She and Peeta had never seen each other after that day. She remembers glancing over her shoulder at him as the Peacekeepers escorted her from the kitchen. That night, she'd cried herself to sleep, missing him, after spending only a few minutes together. It took her a while to forget how special that day was to her.

Years of Capitol life hardened her, turned her into different person. There was a time when she couldn't bear to see a little boy hurt by his mother. Yet she'd grown into someone who could watch kids die—inside arenas that she designed—without batting an eyelash.

Long ago, she'd protected him, wished they could be friends. How had she gone from _that_ to _this_? A girl who'd been determined to kill him?

During that first Reaping, she'd been leaning against a wall, in a private screening room. When his name was called, the wine glass she'd been holding had shattered to the floor. She hadn't seen his face in years, but it was clear to her, so vivid in her memory, and she recognized it in an instant.

 _Not him_ , she thought. _No, not him._

Yet she did her best to ignore his beseeching gaze when they reunited in the training center—if she could even call it a reunion. He'd grown stronger, broader, and more handsome than was practical. He no longer looked like he needed her for anything.

Katniss had sat in her chair, leather-clad legs crossed, and watched the tributes practice, a stone-cold expression on her face. She stared past Peeta Mellark as if he were just another random face. It was too dangerous to let the world see, let her grandfather see, what this boy meant to her. She treated him like he didn't matter.

Peeta wasn't stupid. He got the message. His attitude toward her shifted from hopeful, to confused, to sad, to furious. It pierced her when he finally gave up and only met her eyes with determined, calculating ones of his own—those irises hadn't lost their wow-blue tone.

The longer this went on, the more natural it became to resent each other, to believe they were enemies. The past was dead. The present demanded more from them.

His charming smile won over sponsors. His wit during Caesar's interview pissed off Katniss, not just because he filled out his suit well, but because she thought his confession of love for Delly Cartwright was real. When Katniss learned it was an act, it didn't make her feel better.

The tipping point was the arena. The boy outsmarted her at each turn. And then, _fuck him_ , those berries turned up in his palm.

No, Peeta definitely hadn't needed her help anymore. When he was crowned victor, he sought her out on the dais where she stood seething, and gave her a challenging look.

 _I beat you_ , the look said.

And then came the headlines about his heroism, the star-crossed romance, the uproars in the districts, the possibility of a rebellion, and all that "Mockingjay" bullshit. The reports questioned Katniss's competence, whether she was losing her spark. Or her nerve.

At the end of the Victory Tour, when Peeta and Delly showed up at the presidential mansion for a celebration, Katniss was forced to dance with him. They refused to stare at each other during the waltz, their hands tense, squeezing each other's fingers hard, but God could she smell him. Sweetness and hate radiated off his beautiful body.

It wasn't until the last note of the waltz that they regarded each other. "I will destroy you," she said under her breath.

"Go ahead," he hissed. "Try to finish me off, sweetheart."

Beneath the loathing, she felt something else, something mutual. Something that she was certain made them both sick: desire. It grew and grew into a twisted, hot sort of hunger, indescribable and foolish.

She couldn't even envy Heavensbee for being the one who suggested changing the Quarter Quell rules. She was too busy toasting to the idea. She was so blinded at that point, she wasn't sure if that day in the bakery was real or a shiny illusion she'd invented.

Now she's in a cell, with Peeta's hand in hers. She's afraid to speak and void the moment, the peace between them, which won't last anyway. Bread or no bread, Peeta has no business showing her compassion.

"For a year, I wondered what happened to make you so cold," he says. "What changed you from the girl who stole my heart at ten years old."

"I stole your heart?" she sniffles.

"Every inch. Then you broke it."

"Inevitable."

"No. You don't have to be like _him_ anymore. It's not too late. People can change. I didn't enjoy bringing the tributes' families in here to meet you, but it needed to happen. They needed it, and so did you. Today, I saw the girl I remembered, the girl who actually cared about others."

She can't compete with his words. She stays quiet while his thumb sweeps over her knuckles. The flutter of hope inside her is ludicrous. She can't change. Can she?

"Get some sleep," he says, moving to stand and leave.

"Peeta," she whimpers, squeezing his hand to stop him. He turns toward her and waits, and she asks, "Will . . . will you stay with me?"

A wilderness of emotions crosses his face, so vast she'd be lost trying to navigate them. To her utter relief, he doesn't hesitate. "Yeah."


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My gratitude, once again, to Chelzie and Court. Stellar betas and beautiful friends!

Peeta moves across the mattress and leans against the wall, allowing Katniss to rest her head on his lap. She doesn't deserve to feel this safe, but she grabs onto the feeling anyway, refusing to let go.

"I still hate you, you know," she mumbles, then smiles into his leg when she hears his answering chuckle.

"I still hate you, too," he replies softly.

She doesn't how much of that is the truth and how much is a lie, but she thinks it might be somewhere in the middle. It's better than where they were a few weeks ago, or even several days ago. Together like this, she's that little girl again, and Peeta's that little boy.

That's the thought she falls asleep to, but when she wakes up, she's not surprised to find him gone. She's certain that no one monitors her at night from whatever control room the rebels have set up, otherwise Peeta wouldn't have come to her with so little trouble. Other than the guards outside her door—Hothead Hawthorne and his partner—there were few obstructions in his way.

Plus, Peeta's the Mockingjay. If Hawthorne gave Peeta hell about wanting to be let in last night, well, Peeta has a tongue of gold that can convince even the most stubborn soul.

He must have been watching Katniss from the control room by himself, then. Could that be? Could he have been watching her, and that's how he knew she was crying? There's no other explanation.

It also explains why, as two more weeks pass, they spend more and more time together. During the day, he approaches her tentatively, offering to talk about anything or nothing at all—obviously he means to coax her into dropping her shield. Letting her guard down, she might slip and say something to aid the rebels, exposing her grandfather's weak spots.

She doesn't hold it against Peeta. It's what  _she_  would do. Besides, he seems to enjoy talking with her, listening to her mutter about her favorite color and her fascination with hunting. And he never judges her.

She never judges him, either, when he reveals things about himself. Painting. Orange. Tea. Open windows.

Abernathy, Heavensbee, and Odair must be constantly groaning, having to witness this. Sometimes, when Peeta thinks she's not looking, Katniss catches his eyes flitting to the side while listening to someone snarl into his earpiece. Yet based on the subtle curl of his mouth, he doesn't heed what's being told to him. Those men must trust Peeta a lot to be patient and tolerate this farce.

Except it's not a complete farce. Katniss enjoys talking with Peeta. Though she never shows it.

They also snap at each other when the conversations get heated, as they test one another's tempers. Of course it can't be avoided altogether, merely because they've found a truce.

All the same, they grow on each other. Only not as innocently. She gawks at his lashes too long, at his ass even longer when he leaves the room. She knows when he's checking her out, his gaze tracing her neckline, her mouth, her hair. It almost becomes standard procedure for their eyes to lock at least once a day.

Why doesn't she tell Peeta what he wants to know? Her grandfather doesn't care about her the way a grandfather should. Everything she's been raised to believe is hazy. The remorse punches her in the face when she thinks of her life as a gamemaker. She has a chance to do something about it, to fix it by revealing details the rebels don't know but  _should_  know if they want to win this war.

Why doesn't she out her grandfather? Because she's scared shitless, that's why. Once she undoes the life she used to lead, there's no going back.

At night, Peeta comes to her. Without anyone watching them, she's not Capitol Katniss, and he's not Mockingjay Peeta. They say much less in the dark than when the lights are on, yet the hours are just as honest—maybe more so. She curls up, and he sits beside her, lacing their fingers together. It feels so good, that her head usually ends up nestled on his lap whenever she's feeling daring.

"It's dangerous for you to be here unarmed," she points out one evening. "I could try and escape the instant you relax."

Peeta smirks. "We both know you won't."

The guards outside aren't the problem. She's seen Peeta fight—he's strong, a little uncoordinated yet fast. There's a reason he always stays awake while she drifts off to the rhythm of his breathing. She wishes he would fall asleep with her, but she understands. He probably rests after he leaves at dawn, because he usually doesn't return to question her until midday.

Still, he holds her hand. When he assumes she's asleep—she wants to fool him, just to see if she can—he murmurs, "You have no idea, do you?"

Then he touches her. His fingers trail fire over her cheek, brushing aside her hair, making her die and live. And hope.

kpkpkpkpkp

Katniss asks the rebels to show her more war broadcasts. Apparently, the request takes some deliberation, until the Mockingjay's clan all agree. Maybe they see this as a sign that Peeta's peaceful tactics have helped more than torture, starvation, and dehydration would have. It's a sign of Katniss's willingness to cooperate.

On the cell wall, she watches live protests, floggings, executions, and propaganda videos (from both ends of the spectrum, either featuring her grandfather or Peeta). One particular evening, as she's viewing a recap of recent air raids from the past forty-eight hours, she notices something that gets her to stand and cross the room. Stalking as close as possible to the screen, she peers at the hovercrafts dropping bombs in one location, then another location, then another.

Her grandfather wanted her to concentrate on gamemaking, but she knows Panem's air force—she once made out heavily with one of their best pilots and got information out of him, simply because she always hated being left out of things. And she's eavesdropped on military air raid tactics, discussed at length in case rebels ever got the upper hand. She knows the procedure for an attack.

Foreboding churns in her stomach. As the report segues into another riot in District 11, Katniss calls out, "Stop! Play it again."

When nothing happens, she barks, "Play. It. Again."

There's a pause. The air raid recap starts over. Her mind whirls as she studies the locations and times of the air raids, ticking off her fingers and muttering to herself. Facts. Dates. Hours.

Knowledge. Conclusion. Then cold, hard fear. It sends her pulse into a frenzy.

Katniss whips around, sprints to the cell door, and slams her palms on the surface. "Peeta! Peeta, they're coming! They're coming, dammit, you have to listen to me!"

The lock clicks. The door gives. There's commotion outside the cell, boots scuffling in from the corridor. Peeta rushes inside, looking befuddled, followed by Abernathy and Hothead Hawthorne, who's pointing a gun at her.

"What the devil, girl?" Abernathy crows, his face twisted in annoyance.

"Hovercrafts," Katniss says. "They're going to attack from the air. They'll be here soon. Today."

"How do you know this?"

"I  _know_  my grandfather's air force," she snaps.

"You'll have to do better than that."

"Fuck you! We don't have time for me to do better than that. We'll be dead by morning. You have to get people to safety. Now!"

"Don't listen to her. It's a trap," Hawthorne says between his teeth. "She's playing us."

Peeta stares at Katniss. He believes her. He does.

His eyes flit to a weary Abernathy in silent communication. Abernathy shakes his head. "Girl, you'd better be right." He grunts to Heavensbee through his communicuff, ordering an evac for everyone in the building.

A moment later, Heavensbee's voice blares through a speaker. When the hallway begins to fill up, Abernathy strides out of the cell to guide people. Hawthorne keeps his gun aimed at Katniss until Peeta whips out of pair of handcuffs that she hadn't bothered to notice. He shackles her wrists before she has a chance to register it. She should be disgusted with herself for not seeing this coming, but her pride was squashed weeks ago. She's more impressed with his swift movements than annoyed by her waning reflexes—her lips twitch in amusement.

Peeta jostles in front of her, blocking the hothead's shot. "Go help Haymitch. I'll handle her," he says evenly, yet there's a warning in his tone.

Hawthorne hears it and doesn't approve. He lowers the gun with a grudge. "I bet you will," he bites out. "But if you leave her side for so much as a millisecond, she's mine."

He joins Haymitch and the crowd outside. This isn't the time for a heart-to-heart, but Peeta stays put, his fists at his sides, searching Katniss's face for any sign of deception. He believes her, but he's  _afraid_  to believe her, she realizes.

"Trust me," she says.

"Promise me," he replies.

She nods. It's enough. He takes her hand and gestures with his head for them to get going. They rush into the sea of bodies being corralled through the tunnel, the stench of sweat and mounting anxiety clogging the air. Her hand is moist against Peeta's calloused skin. She asks him for the exact time on his communicuff, then calculates how many minutes it's been since she warned them, then considers where the fleet of hovercrafts had last been seen bombing. Her spine tingles. They should be here in—

Engines roar in the distance. A whistling sound arcs from an invisible place above her head, cutting through an unseen sky, then goes quiet, quiet, so quiet. Only a split second of quiet.

An explosion roars into her ears. The building convulses.

The alarm howls. That's when the panic starts. All sense of order vanishes as civilians tear through the halls, hundreds of pairs of feet pounding the floor, stepping over one another. A cane stabs the ground near Katniss's feet, and she sprints around it. The walls try to hug her with glass and busted pipes. It rains bits and pieces of District 13.

Another quake propels her to her hands, the handcuffs slicing into her skin, her knees slamming into the floor, her teeth clattering. She feels it, pictures it. Hovercrafts diving, dropping, disappearing. Are those her people up there? Who  _are_  her people?

Peeta is no longer holding her hand. When did he stop? She glances around but can't find him. Where is he?

A small hand helps her up, and she finds herself staring into the face of a blond girl, about thirteen years old, wearing what looks like a medic uniform. The girl gazes at Katniss, calm and expressionless. If it weren't for the flush in her cheeks, Katniss would have thought the girl was a statue.

Katniss runs past her, winding around evacuees, searching wildly for Peeta. A fire breaks out in the hall, sparks flying out of split wires from where a lighting fixture has crashed to the ground. She gulps down the heat and becomes those sparks. She becomes the air raid, because there's no other way to feel it, as it burrows through skin and bone.

More noise. A metal beam from above drops and crashes, trapping someone beneath it. It's a woman with salt-colored curls who shouts for help, her leg caught under the beam's weight. In the chaos, no one hears her.

A large hand seizes Katniss's forearm. Peeta.

"Let's go," he chokes.

He pulls. She pulls back until she has his attention. She gestures to the woman. "We need to help her."

The woman thrashes her arms, begs for them to  _hurry_  and  _please_ and _don't leave_ , as Peeta and Katniss try to lift the beam. But it's too heavy and too hot. It burns her fingers, and although the overhead sprinklers finally kick in and blast the place with water, the shower and lingering smoke make it hard to see clearly.

Something cracks above their heads. The woman shrieks.

"One more time," Peeta instructs, fat droplets raining down his face. "Together."

Katniss sets her jaw. "Together."

Another splintering sound. She glances up at the ceiling, which is split down the middle. Another bomb could send it collapsing onto them and the rest of the crowd.

One final haul, with Peeta growling and Katniss wheezing, and the beam suddenly flies off the woman's leg as though it weighs no more than paper. What the . . . ? Katniss's head snaps up to see Odair beside them, hoisting up the beam. The three of them carry it off to the side and gently set it down. Katniss rushes to help the woman, whose left leg is twisted, but Odair gets there first and sweeps the woman into his arms.

"What's your name, honey?" Odair asks.

"Mags," she gasps, her wrinkled face shaking with pain.

"Hi, Mags. I'm Finnick. This is Peeta. And that's Katniss, the evil-doer."

Katniss and Peeta gape at Odair, and he shrugs. "I know I'm distracting, but seriously, are we going to stay here all day?"

Soaked to the bone, they navigate the throng as best they can, with Finnick taking care not to hurt the poor woman. They reach a well of stairs and hustle down into the underground like ants, descending for what seems like a mile. A mechanical female voice rings through the stairwell. The voice counts down, calm and lifeless.  _Ten, nine, eight_. . .

Counting down to what? When had that even started?

 _. . . seven, six, five_  . . .

Katniss's heart drums against her chest. Of all things, the countdown reminds her of the arena, those first seconds at the Cornucopia.

_. . . four, three . . ._

Abernathy stands post outside what appears to be a vault, his eyes bulging in relief at the sight of Peeta and Finnick. He flaps his arm like a madman and roars, "Get in here, get in here, get the fuck in here!"

_. . . two, one._

They spill into the vault. Abernathy punches a combination into a key pad on the wall, the movements stealing Katniss's attention for only a split second. Like a reflex, her eyes register the code, her brain latching onto the string of letters and symbols. An automatic door slides across the threshold and slams into its frame. It breaks Katniss from her trance.

"What are you doing?" she shrieks. "There are people still out there!"

"We can't take any more," he yells back. "It's lockdown."

"There's plenty of room!"

Abernathy points at her. "Girl, do me a favor and  _shut up._ "

Shut up? Did he just tell her, Katniss Everdeen, to shut up? Well, her wrists might be bound, but her fingers aren't. She launches at him. She scrapes her nails across his cheeks and screams obscenities until Peeta seizes her underarms and hauls her backward.

Haymitch fumes, indifferent to the red slashes marring his skin. "It should be you out there," he says, then marches away.

Now Katniss shuts up. He's right.

They jog down a slanted platform, turn the corner, and push through another door to a bunker. The massive space is barely lit by emergency lights, and the dull, yellow cast turns everyone into silhouettes, shadows of families and small groups huddled on the floor and on bunk beds. Katniss stops, listens, tenses. Another bomb rocks the ground beneath them, shoving her and Peeta into the nearest wall. The survivors cry out in one unified burst of terror.

Katniss's minds ventures further back into history, to centuries and wars that she's only read about. World wars where people just like them rushed to safely, hiding in bunkers and air raid shelters, uncertain if they would ever see sunlight again. They sat in underground tombs like this one, helpless, waiting, as their lives were ripped to shreds.

Peeta eases her to the ground, tightening his grip on her protectively as they wait out the rest of the raid. Finally, when the tremors subside, Katniss whispers, "That was it."

He whispers back, "You sure?"

"I'm sure. But everyone should stay down here for a few days, just in case."

"Katniss, Haymitch had no choice. We ran out of time. He had to close the door or the rest of us would have . . ."

She sags into his chest. She understands, but she also understands that someone else should be here in her place, a poor soul who could have been rescued. Instead, one more person will die because of her.

As if reading her mind, Peeta says, "Everyone in this room—you saved them. If you hadn't given us those extra minutes of warning, none of us would have made it. You saved that old woman, Mags. You were the only one who noticed her."

That won't stop anyone in this bunker from slitting her throat in her sleep, the first chance they get. Peeta can't be her shield each second. She knows what everyone will think once they're no longer distracted by fear and realize the president's granddaughter is amongst them: punish the enemy.

"It doesn't matter," she mutters.

"Yes, it does," he insists.

She's not in the mood to argue. She lets him escort her to the medics and remove her handcuffs in order for her cut-up wrists to be examined. Then he strokes her wounds in secret, making her shiver.

 _Thank you_ , she mouths.

 _Always_ , he mouths back, astonishing her.

He strides away to convene with Abernathy and Heavensbee. Odair and Hawthorne make the rounds, calming people down and answering questions. Katniss wants to be useful and help, but she's certain that no one will accept her.

She jumps as another set of hands takes hold of her wrists. It's the blond girl she encountered in the hall. The girl glances between Peeta's retreating form and Katniss, a knowing glint in her youthful eyes. She's calm enough to recognize Katniss, but there's no bitterness in the girl's expression, only pity.

"It's okay," the girl says, swiping Katniss's skin with ointment and wrapping a bandage around her wrists. "You tore some skin, but there are no fractures."

"Oh," Katniss says, feeling an odd sense of admiration toward this girl, with her confident gaze and steadiness in the face of the wounded. Around them, patients whimper from gashes and cough from smoke inhalation while the medics tend to them.

"My name's Primrose," the girl says. "But most people call me Prim."

Is that an invitation? Katniss gulps. Besides Peeta, it seems there is one other person in this place who doesn't loathe her, even if it's for no good reason.

"It's nice to meet you, Prim," Katniss says. "I'm . . . I'm . . ."

The girl smiles sadly. "I know."

kpkpkpkpkp

Katniss rests on the ground, as far from the horde as she can get, and falls asleep to the sight of a grieving Odair making knots from a length of rope. When she wakes, the room is shadowed and quiet, the rest of the crowd having drifted as well. There's no sign of Peeta or the other rebels in charge. It's an endless bunker, so maybe they're on the opposite side. Either way, she scans the area, making sure Hawthorne or any other guards aren't close by.

A thought solidifies in her head. Peeta never returned to handcuff her. She has nowhere to go, but someone in this place will kill her if she stays. This might be her only chance.

The perimeter near the bunker door is clear. Moving quietly, slowly, she crawls across the room, then gets up when crawling becomes impossible. It takes twice as long as it should, but she makes it to the door. Her fingers wrap around the latch, and her heart shatters. Weakness causes her to glance at the slumbering crowd, wishing she could have one more look at him. This hurts. It pierces her more than she ever thought it would, thinking of Peeta, who trusts her, who will soon find her gone.

If she can reach the main control room, where she can write a note and leave it for him, she'll at least be able to offer all the info he needs to get the upper hand in this war. She can do that much for the people she's wronged. For him.

_Suck it up. He was never going to be yours. You're not good enough._

"I'm sorry," Katniss whispers. She pulls on the latch and opens the door, just wide enough to slip through, then closes it behind her. Steeling herself, she hastens up the platform and stabs Abernathy's code into the wall panel. A warning flashes back at her.  _Access denied._

Katniss rolls her eyes. She tries again, this time tapping the code in reverse order. The partition groans open.

There's got to be a secondary hub in the bunker, where the rebels can connect to the building's main operating system. If there is, someone must be monitoring it. Someone must know she's escaping. Praying for a solid head-start, she barrels out of the vault and up the stairs, backtracking the way she came with Peeta and Odair. She dashes through a network of passageways, searching for what might be the main control room of this damn labyrinth, which should also show her where to find the armory, supplies, and the way out of here, once she hacks into the network.

She halts at a corner, then charges to the right, then left. A door appears at the end of the corridor. Maybe that's the place she's looking for. She reaches out for the knob—and grabs nothing but air. Something,  _someone_ , lifts her off the ground. She detects the scent of Peeta, of bread and goodness.

His hand clamps over her mouth, silencing her growls, as he drags her through that same door and kicks it shut behind them. Her eyes skip over the space, the twin bed and closet. They're not in the control room. They're in someone's sleeping quarters.

And somehow, she knows. It's Peeta's room.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I decided to post a firework of my own today ;) Happy New Year's!

He slams the door behind them and traps Katniss against it, shoving her by the shoulders into the hard surface. An outraged cry rips from her throat. She bucks her hips and wrestles with his grip, but his chest and legs overpower her. Worse, his smell—the most distracting mix of sweetness and fury, which only he could emit—fills her head. She goes limp quickly, no longer able to fight back. She's so tired of fighting.

"I consider myself a patient person," Peeta says through his teeth, his voice strung tight and ready to snap. "I've tolerated your indifference, your temper, your arrogance, your viciousness, your self-indulgence, and above all, your silence. Since the day I was reaped, you've ignored me, tossed me into two arenas, subjected me to fires, tracker jackers, jabberjays, rabid baboons, dehydration, acid mist, and a spinning Cornucopia. I risked my place in this rebellion, not to mention my friends' trust in me, by making sure you got special treatment, although you were our prisoner. I went against Haymitch and Finnick and Plutarch, arguing with them for hours on end, just to have you fed, to have your handcuffs removed, to get you decent clothes, to protect you from torture. I convinced them to let me do the interrogations but then got into more shouting matches with everyone over my methods.

"I've been called a fool both to my face _and_ behind my back. Gale refuses to speak to me unless it's about bringing down the Capitol, and even then, he never looks me in the eyes. So thanks to you, I may have lost my best friend. Haymitch is losing faith in me—and pretty soon, the people will, too. I've sacrificed sanity for you, Katniss. I've been pulled in so many goddamn directions, I don't know which way I'm facing anymore!" he shouts. "I wasn't supposed to sneak into your cell, spend those nights holding your hand, but I did because I couldn't stay away. For weeks I've lost sleep, confused myself, and let you back in when I swore I wouldn't. I've exhausted myself in you and started to believe that . . . that you . . ."

Peeta draws in a breath, visibly trying to calm himself down, the darkness sharpening his features. "So after all that, tell me I didn't just catch you trying to escape. Tell me I wasn't wrong about you. Tell me you weren't about to disappear without a word, that you've changed, that you weren't going back to _him_ , that you were just searching the halls for survivors and supplies. Say it, or so help me, Katniss . . ."

"No, I wasn't going back to him!" she shouts back. "But I'm your fucking captive, and everyone in that bunker wants me dead, so what the hell did you expect me to do? Hang around and wait to be attacked? I have to get out of here!"

"You're right! I should have damn well known. But I still hoped for the opposite—that's all I can ever do with you!"

She hangs her head. He snatches her chin between his thumb and forefinger and forces her to meet his gaze. "Don't you _dare_ look away," he growls, his moist breath misting against her skin. "Now answer me: Where were you planning to go?"

She bites her lower lip. Peeta slams his palm on the door, right beside her head, demanding that she speak up, but she can't. She's no match for this boy. He defeated her a long time ago. Years ago. In the murkiness, his eyes glow. On anyone else that ferocious glint would be threatening. Peeta, however, wears the darkness just as powerfully as he wears the light. It makes her think of the second arena. It was possible to toss him into the abyss, but it wasn't possible to drown him, because he will always manage to resurface.

Katniss wants to laugh—or cry. Although she's pressed into the cold slab of the door, her plans thwarted, she's making time to ponder impractical things. He's good at sidetracking her like that.

"You were leaving me? Again?" he asks.

It's the way his words crack that gets a response from her. "When did I leave you before?" she asks.

"You know when," he insists.

She does, but she won't go there. If she does, she'll never make it out of here.

One more feeble attempt to struggle against him wipes her out. She grunts, "You've never been an idiot, so don't be one now."

"And you've never been a coward," he counters.

"Better than being dead."

"Worse than being a traitor."

"Just let me _go_ , Peeta!" she barks.

"I can't!"

"You will."

Peeta's eyes narrow to slits. "Is that so?"

His hands flatten against the door. His head comes down. And his mouth falls upon hers in a fury.

Slanting his lips over hers, he splits her open and fills her with his tongue, shocking her into compliance. Bolts of electricity slash right through her. It's everything all at once. His chest slamming into hers, his wet heat darting inside her mouth, probing the depth of her, wrenching moans from the back of her throat.

Kissing her. Peeta Mellark is kissing her. He's kissing her so fucking good.

His hands rake through her hair and lift her head off the door, angling her so that he can intensify the kiss. He sucks her deep into his taste. The force of it sends her mind spinning, whirling like she's caught in a vortex at the sea, drowning, down, down, down into euphoria. Katniss kisses him back, her fingers gripping his hips, yanking him closer, making him groan in response. There's a hitch in the sound, as if she's been torturing him until now, depriving him of something—and that's it. She doesn't give a fuck, because she has never been this wanted, and her tongue has never been so thoroughly taken. Her body is shameless for him.

A furious gust of wind vaults through the open window, laced with the scent of shadows and desire. This instant it hits them, Peeta tears himself away. He stumbles back, retreating to the edge of the bed, where he grips the footboard. He thrusts a hand through his bangs and rasps, "This wasn't supposed to happen."

Katniss sags against the door, certain that she won't be able to stand if she tries. It's obvious he means the kiss, their attraction, this _thing_ between them. Still, it's laughable how many other meanings that statement could have. Their very first meeting in that bakery wasn't supposed to happen. Their friendship wasn't supposed to happen. Their reunion wasn't supposed to happen. Their feelings for each other weren't supposed to happen.

This wasn't supposed to happen. God, that's the motto of every life story, isn't it?

"But it _did_ happen," she replies.

_And maybe it's not supposed to stop here. Maybe I shouldn't be in a hurry to go yet. Not without one more piece of him._

Peeta reads her mind. She's sure of it, because his features twist in anger. Yet it doesn't have the same destructive effect on her as it used to, not when the signs of yearning are also there. Swollen lips. Large pupils. He can clench his teeth all he likes. It won't conceal those signs.

It's the middle of the night. Floors and floors below, people in the bunker are either dreaming or having nightmares. She and Peeta are alone. He started this. He's the one who cut the cords of tension that have been driving her crazy for weeks, months, over a year. As much as it hurts to want this boy, she's not going to leave without making her mark on his skin. Her mouth waters at the thought of defeating him in ways she hasn't before. Now that she's got him here, he's not getting away from her that easily.

Holding his gaze with a daring one of her own, she starts to take her clothes off. Her fingers find the buttons of her jumpsuit and begin to pop them open. Her breasts strain against her shirt, as if wanting to burst through the fabric and fly to his touch.

Peeta's head instantly swerves to the right. He stares at the floor, a muscle ticking in his jaw. "This is risky," he says.

"I've had a shot," she assures him.

He shakes his head. "There are other reasons."

"We don't care," she says for them both.

It's true. He knows it. She knows it.

_We're weak. We're fools, but we don't care. We're going to fuck.  
_

The neckline of her jumpsuit is now gaping down to her navel. Peeta tries not to, but he looks at her anyway, and his nostrils flare. He makes fists at his sides, like he always does whenever something tempts him. Encouraged, Katniss unsnaps the clasp of her bra from the front and lets it dangle, revealing the inner swells of her breasts. She reaches back, locks the door, and waits, certain that Peeta is about to take care of the rest of this moment.

He says nothing as he advances on her. He doesn't stop until she's driven backward even harder against the door, the slight thud the only sound in the room. This near, with his head tipped down so he can peer at her, she feels his breath on her collarbones. He keeps still, not touching her.

Unable to stand it, her tongue peeks out to lick the seam of his lips. With a shudder, he cups her face and kisses her, but it's not the hectic kiss from before. It's gentle. It's a soft, close-mouthed kiss—one that she's unaccustomed to. To her surprise, the tenderness of it causes her blood to simmer.

"I won't stop once I've started," he warns against her mouth.

"You won't regret it," she promises.

Peeta's control snaps. He grabs the shoulders of her jumpsuit and yanks the whole thing down her body. It puddles to the ground, the hems wide enough for her to step out of with her boots still on. Panting together, they rip his shirt over his head, and she finally gets to touch that solid chest, those strong arms.

Not for long, though. Peeta grasps her wrists and pins them high above her. Her head falls back as his lips trail down the contours of her neck, locate her pulse point, and begins to suck. The feral noise that leaps from her mouth makes him suck harder. On a gritty breath, he drags his mouth back up to hers, his tongue curling inside her. Really fucking kissing her.

Katniss gasps as his hips shove between her legs and start to grind. Pulling his lips away, he says, "That's what I'm going to do to you. I'm going to do it so deep. I'll go through you until you can't see straight."

"Hurry," she demands.

He makes quick work of her bra and panties, but leaves her boots on, too impatient to unlace them. She fumbles with his pants, dragging it down until it's hanging low on his hips, only as far as necessary to free him. Hooking onto the backs of her knees, Peeta hoists her up. Her legs wrap around his waist, her booted feet locked above his ass, and the span of his hips, thick and strong, splitting her thighs. The hard line of his erection rides up against her.

For the first time, his confidence wavers. His wide eyes blink, his hold on her loosening a bit. Gazing down at him, it dawns on Katniss: She's done this before, but he hasn't. And the greedy part of her is pleased that no one else has touched him, while the girlish part is proud. The rest of her spirals toward other emotions she can't name.

"Peeta," she says.

"Katniss," he says.

_Drink me in. Bury me. Take me rough, and soft, and fast, and slow. Just once.  
_

She's about to say all of that, to coax him with words he deserves to hear, but her expression must be enough to convince him. Because just as she opens her mouth, he opens _her_. He juts his hips up into her body, so high up inside her, that her lips stay parted, a surprised noise shooting from her throat and meeting his own. The long, solid presence of him tingles her spine. God, she feels all of him.

They go still, keening into each other's mouths. Peeta's fingers clamp onto her rear, his back shakes, and his eyelids flutter like they want to fall shut. It's clear he won't last. He's holding back, has been holding back forever, just like her, but that's the last thing she wants either of them to do.

"Oh," he grits out. "Fucking wet."

"Yes," she says, rotating her hips and making them both moan.

"And warm."

"Yes. For you to fuck me. Come on, Peeta. Now."

And then he's pounding into her. His lips latch onto her breast, and she feels the hot pull of them over her nipple, while the rapid thrusts of his body have them both thrashing against the door. Peeta holds her tightly while he fucks her. His forehead lands onto the crook of her neck, and Katniss sinks her teeth into his shoulder to contain the sounds building in her chest, which makes him grow even harder.

With one hand, she pulls his hair. With the other, she digs her fingernails into his lower back. Her entire being vibrates and narrows to the place where he's pumping, where she's slick for him, allowing him to move freely, there and gone and there again. Suddenly, he hits a spot that blinds her. She gives up on keeping quiet and pleads for more of that spot, more of that achy pinch.

Soon, neither of them is making sense. It's all mindless shouts and the door rattling on its hinges, the violent shadows and the empty room and the bed they didn't make it to. It's his desperate movements and her limbs riding his waist. It's brutal, without regret. Katniss pitches above him, her hips bumping with his as their bodies jolt up and down. She feels victorious, having him like this, a boy who actually cares about her in spite of who she is, who fucks with his whole body, his whole being, throwing all of himself into it, into her. She wills the moon to come closer, come right through the window. She wants to see their silhouettes. The arch of his body. The turbulent pace.

She wants to thank him for this, for everything. She makes an effort to but fails when all that comes out is another whimper, because she's on the verge of collapse. Her bare back rubs along the cold metal of the door, yet she's on fire.

Peeta is ready. She wants to hear him, so she nips his earlobe, encouraging him. It's a zenith, a rhythm shattered. He stiffens, goes completely still, and then a broken groan tumbles out of him and lands on her skin, the sound drumming through the room. For an instant, she has no memory other than this one. Her climax races up her thighs, consumes her heart, and then swallows her. As she follows him, coming out loud, her muscles flexing and releasing around him, she thinks of a dandelion blowing apart in the wind. Tossed out into the world. Going, going, and gone.

Her chest beats against his, both of them fighting for air, their limbs going slack with exhaustion. Peeta lifts his head. He's lovely like this, flushed and spent and amazed—yet still ravenous for her. This is the look of him when he's got her in his arms.

She traces his lips. It propels him to talk.

"You swooped into the bakery and then disappeared again," he says. "Just like that."

"It's not easy being the one who leaves, either."

Peeta rubs circles over her hipbone. He makes no move to withdraw from her. "Did you think of me, even once, after that day? Did you miss me?"

"I missed you into my pillow every night that first year," she confesses. "Each morning, I had to make up stories to my maid and my friends for why my eyes were so red."

"Then why didn't you write to me?"

She swallows. "We were ten."

"That's not an answer."

"When you're the president's granddaughter, you have no privacy. My mail was always read."

"I lost you once already," Peeta whispers. "How did it end up like this?"

"I don't know," she answers, her chin quivering as it hits her. The realization literally slaps her across the face, shocking her and pushing fat tears out of her eyes. "It was my fault," she says, her short breaths quickening. "It was my f-fault you were r-reaped. Maybe my grandfather knew. He knew what I did in the bakery. He kn-knew that I protected you, that I liked you. My maid, or the Peacekeepers, they must have told him. And he w-wanted to kill you for that. He wanted _me_ to kill you."

She feels her eyes bulge with panic. Her grandfather was often suspicious of anyone he didn't approve of getting too close to Katniss and influencing her. Or maybe he did it to punish her, not Peeta. Maybe he waited all those years to test her resolve and teach her a lesson for getting attached to a lowly boy from D12. For using her power, using the family name, to defend him.

"The r-reaping," she cries, and then crosses some line into hysteria. "It was my fault!"

Peeta grabs her face, his eyes glittering. "Stop. Don't say that."

Katniss doesn't stop. She gets worse, the words falling from her lips in between hiccups. "I'm sorry for everything—I—did. I'm so so-sorry, Peeta. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Forgive me. Please. I'm sorry."

His forehead brushes hers, but not before she notices his own tears gathering. "Thank you," he chokes out.

"One-hundred lifetimes," she sobs. "I could live one-hundred lifetimes and . . . I tried to hurt you. I'm evil. I'm like him."

"Shh. Not anymore. He poisoned you." Peeta thumbs her wet cheeks and repeats, "Not anymore."

They cling to each other, tangled up against the door, half-dressed, half-naked, and weep into each other's hair. It's irrelevant that every time she went after him in those arenas, she subconsciously eased up on her tactics, letting him get away. It doesn't make up for what she did to begin with, but she cries it off, while he cries with her.

Peeta levers her back and feasts his gaze on her, his lips red from their kisses, his skin flushed from sex, his eyes bright from tears. All these raw pieces make him that much more beautiful to her. "I can't hate you, try as I might. I can't hate the little girl who gave me that bread. I loved her." He draws in a breath. "I love her still."

"That's not me," Katniss sniffles bitterly.

"It was. As for the person you are tonight, I care about you, even though I shouldn't. It's impossible to stop. I want to trust you. I want us to protect each other."

"I would never hurt you now. I want to stay here with you."

He nods. "You can."

She can't. She has to leave. But one thing is for certain: These feelings won't go away again, even when they're no longer together. She won't forget, not the way she did before. She's found herself again with him, unlocked that precious connection, and this time it will be rooted inside her for good.

He kisses her lips sweetly. His body is still inside hers, his damp skin pressed to her heartbeat, close to her. And there it is. A painful yet comforting sensation that weaves in and out of her, closing the wound and holding her together like stitches.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter after this!

The blue haze of dawn leaks through the window. It takes with it the fantasy of last night, replacing the memory—their bodies desperately entwined—with the glare of reality. Katniss blinks awake, finds herself nestled in his arms, and inhales the sweet scent of him. Her fingers slide through the fine hairs across his chest. His heartbeat thuds against her ear.

The first thing she feels is not the afterglow of what they did. No, what she feels is pure anger burning in her throat.

Her virginity had already been taken before Peeta came back into her life. Her first time happened when she was sixteen, two years ago, with a Capitol boy. During the months they'd dated, they fucked half a dozen times, always rushed and sloppy. It became less painful each time, but it failed to provide the mental escape she longed for.

Even worse, her mind had flashed to Peeta during that very last romp with her boyfriend, while she was bent over the Rococo armchair in her bedroom. She'd glanced at the watch strapped around her wrist, wondering how much longer he needed to finish, when Peeta's youthful smile invaded her thoughts. She wondered what he looked like as a teenager. Was his mother treating him well? Did he have a girlfriend who made him happy? Would he be a tender lover?

She missed Peeta suddenly, and that made her furious, and that's when she shoved her boyfriend off of her. Yes, he'd been nice and charming, not crude or unpleasant to be around. Katniss even enjoyed talking to him, and he actually _listened_ to her. But he only dated her for status, as did every other boy that followed him. To all of them, she was a prize.

Not to Peeta. His touch was different. With him, it had been rushed and fierce. Yet he'd cradled her face in his hands and stared at her the way he did when they were children—as if _she_ mattered.

_Peeta should have been my first. He should have been a lot of things._

She buries her face in the crook of his arm. His soft body heats her skin, warning her that they can't stay in bed. People will wake up soon. They'll be looking for him. For her.

Peeta's a heavy sleeper. Maybe he isn't used to someone waking him up, someone making him groan softly, thumbing his chin until he stirs. Katniss would love to wake him up forever. She'll only get this one opportunity, however she can't bear to do it while she's naked. The intimacy would make leaving him more difficult.

It's not easy prying herself away. As she slides off the bed, Peeta makes an adorable noise, something like a masculine whine, and an even more adorable face, his features scrunching together. He rolls over unconsciously and rests on his side. The blanket slips low enough to reveal the wall of his back and the beginning swell of his ass.

_In another world, all that could be mine.  
_

Shit. She hates him for completely different reasons now.

Katniss picks through their clothes, which they'd discarded before falling asleep. She finds his shirt and drapes it over her head, the worn cotton brushing her shoulders. Peeta is not a tall man, yet the hem hangs past her knees. She presses the shirt collar to her lips and closes her eyes. Just for a minute, and then she swears she'll get dressed in her own clothes.

"Of all the beautiful outfits I've seen you wear, this is my favorite look on you," his sleepy voice says.

Katniss turns. She feels a blush creep up her neck at being caught mooning over his shirt like a heartsick schoolgirl.

Have mercy. He's sitting up, the white sheet pooling around his waist. He's tousled and sexy—and she's mortified because she wants to spend the rest of their hours kissing the truth away. She's in danger of becoming one of those girls who thinks kissing can solve things. That love is the antidote to war. It conquers all.

Peeta's grin fades. He watches her closely, his features sagging beneath the weight of everything just outside this room. "You still plan to leave."

He knows her unspoken thoughts well. She knows him, too. At least, the bits and pieces. Is that enough? How do people fall for each other without knowing everything? Without learning about the normal things before going insane and depressed and stupid with love?

She sinks onto the bed and curls her feet beneath her. "I have no choice," she says. "You know what will happen if I stay."

"I won't let it happen," he bites out. "I will never let anyone hurt you."

"Peeta, don't make that promise. You won't be able to keep it. Go back to the bunker. Wake up your Star Squad and talk strategy. Act like everything's normal—as normal as can be expected. I'll be far from here by the time they realize I'm missing. They won't suspect you."

He hangs his head, shakes it in refusal. She longs to touch whatever part of him is available. Hands are out of the question because they're busy squeezing the bedsheets. She reaches for his foot, his toes, his ankle, targeting easy areas, not wanting to smother him. But before her fingers actually get to any of those places he shifts away, rejecting her.

Katniss changes her mind. She goes for full-on contact. She climbs behind him, weaving her arms around his torso, securing her legs around his waist, linking herself tight to his frame and resting her head between his shoulder blades. Peeta relaxes, flattening his arms over hers and threading their fingers together.

She speaks into his ear. "Peeta?"

Nothing.

"Peeta."

Nothing.

"Peeta Mellark—"

"Katniss Everdeen-Snow," he snaps.

She kisses his lobe. "You know I have to get out of here. I'm not coward. This isn't about me, it's about you. Will you still be able to treat me like a prisoner? Lock me in that cell again, for appearances sake? I don't think so. And what about Haymitch, Finnick, Plutarch? What about Gale? He's your best friend. You're in the middle because of me. All the people closest to you—I'm ruining your relationships. I'll destroy the image of the Mockingjay. Think about it: I'm too much of a liability. You need everyone to trust you. To follow you. You can't be compromised."

And if a rebel manages to kill her, it will destroy him. He will find a way to blame himself for it.

She's an enemy and an outcast on both sides. She's no good for him. She won't drag him down.

His silence proves that he understands what she's saying, but being understood doesn't exactly feel great. It feels the opposite in so many ways, in so many corners of her. She brushes the side of his face with her mouth, believing he'll sense everything else that's stuck in her throat.

 _It's always been you, even when I didn't want it to be_ _. You're the best person I've ever met. You make me believe I can be better. You've ripped my heart from my chest, but that's okay. You can have it. It's yours._

Suddenly, she lands on her back. Peeta lands on top of her, flattening his palms on either side of her head. "There's. No. Way. I'm. Letting. You. Go."

She will not cry. They've become two people who aren't allowed to have each other, yet she won't stop holding on, gathering pieces of him and storing them in her memory. And she will not cry.

"All these years, I always knew you worshiped me," she jokes.

"I hated you," he admits.

"Same thing."

"Yes," he agrees, his voice brittle. "So please don't go."

She rests her fingers on his face, marveling at how different it is to be with someone gently, rather than to be with them harshly. Her life has mostly been the latter. Until Peeta, who saw in her something worth his affection. His feelings are a mystery to her, because in order to deserve him, she would have to be born as someone else. She would have to either save the world or keep her filthy hands off it. She would have to be raised by people like her father and mother, grow up near a forest where she could disappear into nature, learn an honest trade like hunting, and live peacefully.

She's being dramatic. Maybe he's just a kind, brave boy who doesn't want to be set high on a pedestal, who didn't ask to be a savior, who got there by chance. A boy who's blinded by lust and nostalgia, who thinks Katniss Everdeen-Snow can be saved. Maybe Peeta doesn't want her to live through countless lifetimes to deserve him. Maybe he only wants her to forgive herself, to realize that it's up to her to change.

That's also why she has to leave. Because here, she won't live long enough to try.

Peeta gets her reasons, however he thinks they can overcome them. He won't give her up, no matter what she says. His determination straddles the thin line between Devoted Lover and Dumbass.

All right. Then she'll have to go with Plan B.

So she lies to him. "Fine," she says. "I'll stay."

Peeta asks her for one more time before they return to the bunker. Her back arches so he can peel off the shirt she's wearing, and then he kisses her senseless. He fucks her again, slower than before. She raises her knees and clings to his body. She moans against his racing heartbeat, "Keep me here."

He thinks she truly means it. And in her own way, she does.

kpkpkpkpkp

They get dressed while Peeta tries to convince her to maintain a positive attitude. "I'll get Haymitch and Finnick on your side eventually. Once I have them, everyone else will follow. I can do this for you." Sitting on the edge of the mattress, he yanks the laces of his boots and then double-knots them. Then he stands and tosses her a cocky grin. "I've got a reputation for saying the right things."

"Stop acting like it'll be easy," Katniss says, buttoning up her jumpsuit. "I've seen you demonstrate your skills plenty, Peeta Mellark. I've been on the receiving end of them, but even you have handicaps. This isn't the same—what?"

Why is he grinning at her, all wistful?

He grabs her by the hips and tugs her close to him, and it sucks because he smells good, which she doesn't need right now. Her senses have to be alert, not distracted. She braces her hands on his forearms and attempts to push him away, but he tightens his grip, his arms banding around her waist. "I like hearing my full name on your lips."

"You'll regret this choice. I'm giving you one last chance to kick me out of here."

Peeta doesn't listen. He drifts a finger across her cheek.

"We've got to focus," Katniss breathes. "Please, stop touching me."

"I can't help it."

"Dammit, Peeta, you'd be better off without me."

"Katniss," he whispers, like it's a secret. "I forgive you."

_Get it together, Everdeen. ASAP!_

The sound that comes out of Katniss is one she hadn't thought herself capable of making. It's like someone has tried to strangle her and then has suddenly let go. She lifts his hand and kisses his knuckles, because he will always be her biggest weakness. "No, you don't," she says. "Not yet."

He angles his face down at her, resting his lips on hers. "If things had been different, if we were on the same side from the beginning, we would have made an epic team."

"I suppose," she concedes.

"So trust that. Let's be an epic team now. We can protect each other."

She sighs. "You're relentless, aren't you?"

"I am," he says.

Bunching his shirt in her fists, she pulls him to her. He grabs her face, his lips descending on hers like something gentle fallen from the sky. Her knees buckle, but he holds her up. She used to witness kisses like this between other people, different from the insincere ones she'd shared with other boys. She used to stumble upon couples in private corners during dinner parties and balls, in random hallways or in the gardens of her home. She used to be grateful that she wasn't on the receiving ends of those romantic kisses— _real_ kisses between _real_ lovers—because who'd want to have something so deep, only for it to end seconds later?

Now she wants nothing more than that. Nothing more than his hands shifting from her face to the back of her head, securing her beneath the movements of his mouth.

"Ready to go?" she asks when he breaks away.

"Ready," he says.

"Okay."

And then Katniss punches Peeta in the face.

She aims for the right spot and lands a blow that knocks him unconscious. His head whips to the side, and he staggers backward, crashing onto the bed. His wow-blue eyes fall shut. He's going to be fine, she assures herself. Furious, but fine. The rebels won't blame him. They'll assume he tried to stop her from getting out of here.

First, she grabs a paper and pencil from his desk and writes all the details about her grandfather's army: strengths, flaws, operations. She also draws a hasty map of the presidential mansion, identifying secret points of entry, as well as passages that no one else knows about—that her grandfather believes _Katniss_ doesn't know about—and the security detail. She lists passwords and codes to dismantle alarms and disrupt communications. She reveals exactly where her grandfather is likely holding Johanna Mason and Annie Cresta—Odair's D4 friend—prisoner and how to breach the area.

The rebels have already witnessed Katniss's mental breakdown. It's not a stretch for them to believe that Peeta got this info out of her, bribed her or took advantage of her vulnerability at some point. He'll figure it out what to say.

She stuffs the paper into his pocket. "Remember," she whispers.

Next, the area needs to appear as though there was a struggle. In her mind, she quickly choreographs the fight and follows its progress, overturning the desk chair, smashing the reading lamp onto the floor, and tossing pillows off the bed. That will suffice.

Katniss steals his communicuff and stomps her heel into the face until it breaks apart. Unfortunately, he's got no weapons on him. The pencil she used is hardly a means of defense, but it's sharp, so she takes it anyway.

After slipping the pencil up her sleeve, she checks the hall, then twists around. Peeta doesn't stir. She blows him a kiss, leaving the door wide open so it looks as if they tumbled into that room, and catapults down the corridor while struggling to get her bearings. The night before, he told her that he had a room underground as well, but he also wanted a place to clear his thoughts, somewhere that enabled him to see the sunset when he needed it. He fought with everyone about it, but he got his way. It's a luxury that only the Mockingjay could have received.

According to Peeta, his windowed room is near the hanger, where they keep hovercrafts and weapons. Everything else is below ground, but there's no way she's going back down there. Not if there might be a suitable armory in the hangar. Also, she might find other supplies and a smaller control room there. Possibly.

She turns two corners and slams into someone. A towering, uniformed figure stands before her, his livid gaze latching onto her face. It's Hawthorne.

She's lifted off her feet and hammered into the nearest wall before she knows what's happening. He clamps onto her neck, choking her with one hand, pinning her shoulder with the other. The more she gasps for breath, the tighter his grip becomes, robbing her of air. Her pencil pierces the skin under her sleeve. She fights to keep it from dropping.

"Nice try," Hawthorne snarls, reeking of sweat and something sour. "I knew Peeta wouldn't be able to keep you on a leash."

She wiggles her wrist.

"You've got him fooled, but not me."

The pencil slips out.

"You're nothing but Capitol scum."

It lands in her fingers.

"You'll find out what it's like to suffer. You'll get what you deserve."

She jams the pencil into his ear. The boy roars, releasing her, grasping his bloody lobe.

With a growl, he launches toward her again. Out of nowhere, a hand darts out and stabs something into his arm. His eyes roll back, and he drops to the floor, out cold. Primrose, the medic girl, appears behind him, brandishing a needle. "Are you okay?" she asks calmly.

Katniss clutches her throat. "How . . ."

"My mom says I pay attention to things. I don't know if that's true, but I know people here. I've heard them say what they'd do to you if they could. I saw the way Gale was looking at you last night, like he wanted to harm you. Plus, I couldn't sleep anymore. I saw that you were gone. I saw him leave."

"Thank you—"

"This isn't something you thank a person for."

Katniss nods. She kneels beside Hawthorne, disarms him of the gun and knife strapped to his side, and rises again. "I can't stay," she begins.

Primrose holds up a hand. "Are you going back to the Capitol?"

Katniss shakes her head. "I don't know."

The only reason she'd consider that would be to defeat Snow, risk herself in order to protect Peeta and everyone else. The information she gave him would be a last resort for the rebels, in case she failed and got herself killed like an idiot. But how would she get to Snow from here? Of all the damn things she doesn't know how to do, it's fly a hovercraft. Could she stow away on a train? Make it to the Capitol on foot?

Could she stomach it? Cutting down her own grandfather?

Primrose hesitates, peers at her, and reaches a decision. To Katniss's bafflement, the girl rattles off directions, mapping out the safest route into the forest. "You'd better hurry," she says, then turns to leave—just like that.

"Wait," Katniss says. "Why did you help me?"

Primrose wheels back around and shrugs. "I didn't do it for you. I did it for Peeta. I mean . . . well, he must love you a lot."

Katniss's chest squeezes. "He means everything to me."

For some reason, she wants Primrose to know that. Once he wakes up, Peeta will go back to hating her. But maybe if she leaves the words behind, with somebody to hear them, to carry the words back to Peeta, one day he will believe them, too.

After the girl leaves, Katniss rushes to the hangar. As she hoped, there's a control room, not as big as the main one must be, but it will have to do. There's one other thing she needs to deal with. Hacking into the system takes longer than she cares for. Her shaky fingers jump across a landscape of buttons, typing, clicking. And then, at last, she's there.

She clings to the back of a chair and stares at the screen mounted on the wall. "President Snow, it's Katniss," she says aloud, battling to keep her words steady. "Are you there?"

No response. She licks her lips.

"President Snow, are you there? It's me," she repeats. "It's Katniss."

The fucking monitor hisses. It kills her.

"President Snow," she demands.

Without warning, his white hair invades the screen. It's the first thing she notices. That, and the rose in his lapel.

"Now, now, my dear," her grandfather says, sitting in his office chair, relaxed and diabolically elegant. "What happened to _Grandfather_?"

She gulps down the acidic taste building on her tongue. "Were you ever really that? You lied to me. All these years, everything you said, everything you taught me."

He threads his fingers together like a net. "Hmm. You seem to have misplaced your manners along with your loyalty. I can tell from that flush crawling up your neck, and that bed hair, that you've let the rebels get to you. One renegade in particular has wormed his way into your . . . good graces."

The way he emphasizes that last part makes her sick. "Keep him out of this," she snarls. "If you don't, I will come to the Capitol and end you myself."

Snow leans forward in his chair, twiddles his wrinkled thumbs. "I never was able to knock him out of your system," he says matter-of-factly, confirming her suspicions that he had Peeta reaped because of her. "You had such promise growing up, dearest. I was even convinced that you'd managed to squash your little childhood crush to smithereens as the years went by." He raises his index finger in the air. "But just to be certain, I tested you. Yet when you came of age as a Gamemaker, with that insolent _boy_ at your disposal, you showed your true colors by keeping him alive. Subtly protective, but I saw through it. Just imagine my disappointment: Behind those steely irises, you proved to be soft as your father was."

_Don't you love me at all? Don't I matter even a little?_

Hot tears prick the backs of her eyes. Katniss grits her teeth to stop them. "You announced my death to the world."

"I would have thought you'd grasp the logic behind that."

"Once, I would have. Back when I used to be a monster like you."

"And what?" Snow jeers, his eyes crystalline with amusement. "You think you're redeemed because of the Mockingjay? He's had you, that much is clear. But do you honestly think he'll want you after all this?"

Katniss swallows. "Someday, he might," she mutters.

Her grandfather laughs, flashing white teeth and lips covered in sores. "I applaud your stubbornness and entitlement, dearest. You get that from me."

In response, she pounds her fist against a flashing button. She watches the screen twitch, the connection falter, and the darkness swallow him whole. "Not anymore," she whispers, quoting Peeta.

She finds a bow and grabs a supply pack from the stash in the hangar, then vanishes into the woods. _Not anymore._


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Although this story is a divergence, the ending is about as close to canon as I'll ever get. It wrapped itself around my heart, and I hope it does the same for you guys too :*)
> 
> Thank you so much for following, reviewing, and supporting this one. And all my gratitude to Chelzie and Court for their beta love.
> 
> Music: "Girl in the War" by Josh Ritter.

Katniss doesn't reach the Capitol. She heads that way after following Primrose's directions into the woods, but traveling undetected makes the route infinitely longer, and without a source of communication, there's no way of knowing what's happening beyond the trees shielding her. A couple of weeks into her journey, she comes across a refugee camp. She ventures close enough to steal food and spy from behind a tent as a group of men recap the rebels' invasion of the Capitol.

She'd missed it. Of course she had. What had she been thinking? What did she expect? To get there in disguise, on foot or by train, before Peeta and a bunch of D13 hovercrafts?

She hadn't been thinking. Not for a long time.

The refugees listen to reports on an old portable device while Katniss eavesdrops. According to what she hears, the rebels used the information she gave Peeta to rescue Annie Cresta and Johanna Mason. They infiltrated the city center, got into the mansion, and captured the president. They won the war. And that was that.

Evidently, Peeta had been chosen to execute Snow, but he'd publicly refused to do the gruesome honors. Instead, Abernathy volunteered to pull the trigger.

On that awful-wonderful day, Katniss curls up between two trees, a safe distance from the refugee camp. A butterfly lands on her finger and then flutters away. She allows herself to shed a tear for her grandfather. Just one.

She moves on from there, keeping a hood over her head and her mouth shut, cursing inwardly but surviving. After over a month of this, she reaches an island by boat, a tiny country northeast of Panem. There, an abandoned cabin materializes in the forest like something out of a dream she once had. The walls are sturdy, there's a fireplace, and thankfully the faucet still runs, but the rest of the place needs work. She trades squirrels at the local Hob Market for supplies to clean out the cobwebs and chimney, fix the roof and porch, and fill the cabin with blankets and dishes.

She cuts her hair so that it hangs just past her earlobes, dyes the locks a dark blond, and gives herself a shot—another item worth haggling for at that market—that changes her eye color from gray to brown. Her past is dead, nobody knows her here, and no one is looking for her, but that doesn't mean she shouldn't be cautious.

She becomes Kat Everlark. The name is easy to get used to.

More months pass. Autumn ices into winter. Winter melts into spring. One morning, she sits by a lake and stares at the water's surface reflecting the sun, gold flecks shimmering over black. From the public statement her grandfather made, the world already believed Katniss Everdeen-Snow was dead. Yet for some reason, the rebels didn't refute it and instigate a search. Instead, they give her memory a posthumous official pardon. She has no idea what Peeta told them, what he bargained, but whatever it was, it protects her now. Her name has since vanished from broadcasts.

_What did you do to make that happen, Peeta? What dumb thing did you do?_

At sunset, she gathers her quiver and bow. It's been a long day, and her game bag is empty because she hadn't been able to concentrate on hunting, because she'd been too busy remembering him. A fresh wave of melancholy forces Katniss to a halt in the woods. His face is there whenever she closes her eyes. Her heart is so full of him that she'll never be able to push him out, even though she should. He looked after her, but he couldn't have forgiven her for escaping, deceiving him, leaving him the way she did. His life does not, _will not_ , include her.

It's dark by the time she reaches the log cabin, kicks off her boots, and boils water for tea. For the most part, she keeps to herself, living quietly in these woods, learning to hunt and only conversing with the locals when she has game to barter. The one person that she's accepted as a friend is an older lady by the name of Greasy Sae, also a good tradeswoman.

As the stars glimmer outside the window, Katniss settles in a chair before the fire, the heat rolling across her bare toes. She sips her tea—no sugar—and thinks of double-knotted shoelaces and cheesy buns. It hurts to smile, but she does. It's quiet in this cabin. She's lonely, scared.

Will it always be like this? Is she meant to be alone? Has he thought of her at all? Did he think of her when her grandfather was shot? Why does she miss Peeta more than her own flesh and blood? Why?

_Peeta cares about me. He always has. That's the difference._

_I care about him. I need him. I can't need him._

Katniss's eyes sting, but she can't let it out. If she starts, she won't stop, and it will take ten times longer to put herself back together.

The days are tolerable, pleasant sometimes, especially when she's hunting. It's the nights that are tough. The silence. The half-vacant bed. The nightmares of children, chariots, arenas, riots, explosions, fires, war. Nightmares of her grandfather, the man who stopped breathing because of her.

Hours later, she wakes up gasping, having killed him yet again by telling Peeta her secrets. Repeatedly, her grandfather lives a full life and then dies inside her head. Lying back down, Katniss squeezes her pillow, imagining Peeta gathering her into his arms. It doesn't make her forget, but it does stop her from killing her grandfather once more in her dreams that night. Instead, she buries him.

kpkpkpkpkp

The birds wake her up, their tiny chirps flitting into the air from outside her window. The sun hasn't fully risen yet, but there's a pink-gold light hitting the sill and parts of the woods. She loves mornings like this, the openness of them, promising her another chance to do something right. There's no one—no maid or personal assistant—striding into her room with a clipboard, before she's even had a cup of hot chocolate, to go through a bulleted list of grim duties for the day.

No. She can do better now. She's read about the districts in Panem rebuilding themselves, and if she weren't officially dead to them, she would be there to help. Maybe she can do good things here—once she gets used to the people, and the people get used to her.

First, she has to finish working on this cabin. Even before that, she needs something warm to drink. Hot chocolate _does_ sound good. She has a small jar of cocoa powder that Sae gave her as a welcome-to-town gift. It's so precious that Katniss hasn't dared touch it. She's tempted now, but can't bring herself to use it. It's the sort of sweet, creamy drink that makes her long for pastries—and other sweet things. It makes her think of a little boy who would have loved the taste, and thoughts of that little boy make Katniss think of the grown man he became, and _that_ makes her think how nice it would be to share a cup with him. And all of that reminds her that she's alone.

Maybe just some coffee, though she hates the stuff. Wiping her eyes, Katniss drags herself out of bed, throws an oversized sweater over her t-shirt, and pads into the hall in her socks. The birds have apparently stopped chirping, and she realizes that she's humming a lullaby to herself: the only tune that comforted her as a child before bedtime, when she missed Peeta's friendship.

With a shake of her head, Katniss quits the tune and heads toward the kitchen. And that's when she smells it. A familiar aroma fills the cabin with its rich, yeasty scent. And . . . melted cheese.

She trips over her own feet. _It can't be._

That's when she hears it: cabinets opening and closing. Her heart drops into her stomach. Blindly, her shaky palm reaches up and presses against the nearest wall for support. She leans into it, the movement causing the floorboards to creak.

In response, the sounds in the kitchen stop, too. There's a charged moment of suspicion—because maybe her loneliness, all those days and nights staring into the fire, have made her crazy—and then of surrender, because if she's gone mad, that's fine. If madness is this blissful, she will allow it.

All thoughts vanish once his footsteps resound through the house. Tears are already pooling in her eyes when his blond head appears around the corner, glinting in the sun's rays as the day breaks fully from outside. It's his wow-blue eyes staring back at her. It's _him_. His hair is longer and mussed. He's wearing jeans and a cotton shirt that shows how much weight he's lost. But when his gaze drinks her in, his features transform into the most tender expression she has ever seen.

"Remember me?" he asks softly.

"Peeta," she whispers, and that's all she can do. He's stolen her breath. Her breath belongs to him.

He looks as thin and pale as something squeezed out of a tube, but he's here. "You're beautiful when you're speechless."

"You look awful when you're tired," she says.

Peeta crosses over to her and takes her hands in his. The touch sends her spiraling, tears spilling down her cheeks. His throat bobs, like he's holding back from crying with her. They move at the same time, pressing their foreheads together. She's going to ask how he found her, but she really doesn't care. He's Peeta. He will always find her.

"This woman, Sae, told me where you live," he explains. "The door was open, but I didn't want to wake you. I made you breakfast."

"Breakfast," she echoes.

His nose grazes her temple. "I just thought we could eat together."

She chuckles through her tears and lifts her head to gaze at him. There's no anger or resentment on his face, no questions about why she left him the way she did. There's simply understanding. He knows. He forgives her.

"Hi," he says.

"Hi," she says.

Peeta hoists her against him, hugging her tightly. He plants kisses in her hair as she sags into his chest, her fingers threading around his neck, inhaling his safe scent. They hold on and on and on.

kpkpkpkpkp

Peeta tells her how, after she left, he threatened to stand down as the Mockingjay if the rebels didn't pardon Katniss. It was a bluff. He wasn't planning to do it, but he was very convincing. He got what he wanted, although Abernathy and Hawthorne still hold that against Peeta.

With so much to do, he stayed in the Capitol after the war, then went to District 12 to help with the rebuilding. And then he went to find Katniss. He didn't reveal to anyone where he was going, only said he wanted to find a home far from everything. He wanted to live in peace, somewhere clear of the past, agreeing to return to Panem twice a year to be the Mockingjay.

Aside from that, he's free to be with her. This cabin becomes their home.

They pace themselves, growing back together. They sleep in the same bed—only sleep, nothing more. They're inseparable but careful. They touch but don't _touch_. They're so busy picking up one another's pieces. Sometimes they shout at each other about petty things: dirty dishes or innocent comments that are taken the wrong way. Once, she throws a freshly baked cheese bun at him, and he throws it back, yelling that he just pulled it out of the oven. The whole thing is too ridiculous, that they break into laughter. True laughter, splitting Katniss's gut in half, until they're beaming at one another like normal fools. Like kids feeling something very close to love.

They cling to each other on the couch. Talking, thinking, breathing. Most times, they don't speak at all, playing with one another's hair or fingers instead.

Another day, she walks into their bedroom as he's draping a shirt over his bare chest. He stops. She stops. The wanting is like an idea—swift and unexpected and _there_. Peeta's gaze flits over her. He isn't, and she isn't, and they aren't. But he wants, and she wants, and they want. In between all that, Katniss feels the _not yet_ in her heart, and the _soon_ in her belly, and _very soon_ between her thighs.

From then on, she chews on her fingernail when she hears him in the bathtub. He closes his eyes when she licks crumbs off her lips from the food he's cooked. She sings while picking berries from neighboring bushes, and he leans against the porch and listens. He paints her face on canvas, and she shaves his, smirking at his jokes about letting her handle a blade around him.

They tremble at night from memories they can't escape. Then they hug and whisper about the day they met, and it makes them feel better—and so do the kisses, which he initiates, but she intensifies. It's tender, then demanding as their tongues meet. Those nights get hotter and deeper and longer, in more ways than one. The sounds in the room change, like a season shifting from one temperature to the next, from screams to sighs. It's not sex, but they work their way around that.

The _very soon_ comes on her birthday. In the morning, Peeta bakes a surprise while enjoying music from an outdated player that he bought from Sae's stall. As one of his favorite songs floats through the room, a forgotten tune from another century, Katniss shuffles into the doorway, sleepy and wearing his shirt. The instant Peeta sees her like that, he grabs her. Propped onto the counter, she giggles as he alternates between feeding her bites of lemon cake and nibbling powdered sugar from her lips. He sighs against her mouth during a particular lyric about a girl who's been in a war and has eyes that sparkle and bubble into rain.

In the afternoon, she's floating in the lake, letting the sun hit her face, when the water ripples. Her eyes open, and he's there, next to her. She stands upright, wiping droplets from her eyes, needing to see him clearly, because he's an even brighter light. It feels wonderful and natural to be naked with him here.

A present dangles from his index finger: a pearl attached to a silver bracelet. "I found it in the arena," he admits, fastening it around her wrist. "It struck me that something so beautiful could exist in such a horrible place."

It's like her dream, when she last slept in the Capitol, which was never really home. This forest, this boy— _they're_ her home.

Peeta kisses the pearl. "Do you like it?" he asks.

Katniss stares at the gift, then at him. "I'm in love with you," she says.

They barely make it out of the water. He hurries, carrying her across the grass, her legs encircling his waist. They pant in between ravenous, impatient kisses. They're dripping wet, but that's irrelevant. They need a bed. Fast.

In their room, her head hits the pillow. He covers her, all damp skin and shaky breath, his hips wrapped up in her thighs. As his open mouth brushes her nipple, she tips her head back. When he sucks on her with a groan, it makes her skin hum and turns her into the sun.

They say nothing as they watch each other. He drags his palm down the side of her neck, across her breasts, down to her knee. Grabbing her there, he hooks her leg over his hip and sinks his weight onto her. The last time they did this was fire and ice. This time, it will be different. The blankets shield them, cloaking them in a bundle of movement and anxious noises. He maneuvers, the crown of him just outside of her. She's ready to draw him into that achy place, but he grins, twitching forward a fraction at time. It's unbearable. Katniss has never begged for anything, but she does now. Her whimpers inspire Peeta to torture her more.

They're both wet everywhere. Their skin, their mouths. She's wet all over him. It feels so good, she might howl from it.

Peeta knits her fingers with his, forming them into fists, and holds them on either side of her head. He lifts his upper body to glare down at her. A delicious glare, not a dangerous one. Like this, locked beneath him, she's his. He's hers. Anything else is . . . well, they know.

He leans down to kiss her, then pauses just above her lips, and—Katniss's whole body bows off the bed. "Oh," she yelps toward the ceiling.

He's inside her. Just as his mouth hovers over hers, his hips roll forward, and he slides through her, so hard through her. And yes, he does it again, one long stroke out, one long stroke in. His rhythm robs her of breath. He thrusts up into Katniss for the third time and pushes a moan from her throat, all while his parted lips remain inches from hers. It goes on and on. He whips into her until even the bed is knocking against the wall.

They grow louder, holding nothing back. She loved him as a stranger once, then as a friend, then as the enemy. However, Katniss has never cherished Peeta more than she does today, when no one can hear them for miles.

"Stay with me," he gasps above her.

"Always," she says, because she's never been anywhere else.

With a shudder, he spreads her wider and gives her more. His head dips, her chin lifts, and their mouths do the rest. It's a kiss that deepens and wipes them of memory and makes them come. The pleasure seizes them, their bodies rise from the mattress, and they shout into the kiss.

Peeta feels the same about Katniss. She knows that he does, but wrapped up in his arms, she asks anyway. A simple question.

And he answers. Just one simple word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last sweet note: The paperback edition of my book is now available :) Check out my tumblr for links!

**Author's Note:**

> I’m at: andshewaits (d0t) tumblr (d0t) com. Come say hi!


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